with all the love i can muster
by Zayz
Summary: T/Z. AU S3-10. She snaps, "Just because we slept together, doesn't mean I have to trust you." The long resulting silence – stunned, angry, disbelieving – tells her, painfully, that he disagrees.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This has been in my head for a long time, thanks to Kim (violashipwrecked on Tumblr). Now, I'm very nervous about it – it's very long and a little crazy – but I'm posting it anyway, so I beg you to please be kind in your critiques. This is kind of experimental, and hate mail always breaks my heart.

Basically, I _rewrote seasons 3 through 10 of NCIS_ the way I might have done it if I were on the writing staff. (That's why it's so long. Ten years of Tiva is no small feat, y'all.) For the most part, I stuck to the main storylines, and a bit of the dialogue is the same as the show, but there are important tweaks, and they should be easy to see. For the stuff I left the same, I am banking on the show's context to fill in the blanks.

Disclaimer: Of course, as you know, I own nothing you recognize from NCIS – but I also do not own the Ed Sheeran song I quoted, nor do I own the Tom Waits song later quoted. I own basically nothing you see here, sadly.

Again – remain kind and open-minded as you proceed. And if you can, enjoy. I promise I gave you a happy ending.

* * *

**with all the love i can muster  
By: Zayz**

Give me love like never before  
'Cause lately I've been craving more  
And it's been a while but I still feel the same  
Maybe I should let you go

You know I'll fight my corner  
And that tonight I'll call you  
After my blood is drowning in alcohol  
No, I just want to hold you

Give a little time to me or burn this out  
We'll play hide and seek to turn this around  
All I want is the taste that your lips allow  
My, my, my, my, oh give me love  
My, my, my, my, oh give me love  
My, my, my, my, oh give me love  
My, my, my, my, give me love

- Ed Sheeran, "Give Me Love"

* * *

She is supposed to be no one. She is a girl in a purple bandana, who waltzes into his life with an admittedly seductive smirk, and a request for Agent Gibbs. She is supposed to get what she needs, leave, and stay gone, because goodness knows they have enough to deal with right now.

But she doesn't. She is Ari Haswari's control officer, and she is convinced of his innocence, and there is a serious agent beneath the flirty first impression. Clearly, she is a woman full of surprises.

She surprises him again, that long, rainy night when he thinks he's so clever, tailing her against her knowledge. She pierces his charade outside the hotel door, and shares a slice of pizza and the story about her sister. From what he learns about her later – the Great Wall of Mossad Agent Ziva that she has built around her heart, with armed sentries posted every few feet to keep out intruders – he realizes in hindsight that she, too, expected to leave and stay gone. That story was meant for someone she would never see again. She wouldn't have told him if she had known.

Or maybe she would have. Maybe from the moment they had their first extraordinary conversation about phone sex, she knew there was something in him that made her relax the guards and let him in.

He isn't sure about that. But he _is_ sure that she isn't no one, and she is definitely here to stay.

* * *

It's only a couple of months after her unorthodox induction to their team that Tony is told to go undercover with Ziva. And, frankly, he isn't ready yet. He doesn't trust this strange little cannonball so freshly shot from Mossad; he is still bitter about the frame-up that sent him to prison, still vulnerable about his missing partner.

Kate would have been a riot with this assignment. Kate would have whined and groaned and complained about it – she would have begged not to go with Tony – she would have worn a jumpsuit, if necessary, to keep Tony from ogling her – she would definitely not have shared the bed or pretended to have sex with him.

But they would have gotten the job done, and done well. They would have been in sync with each other's tells, and they would have laughed about it later. God, he still misses Kate so much – like he's missing something seemingly non-essential, but definitely essential, from his very self.

Like his toes. Yes, Kate is like his toes – small and tucked up inside his socks most days, things he takes for granted, until they are gone and he is left disoriented, off-balance.

Instead of predictable, prudish Kate, though, Tony has wild, unpredictable Ziva. Ziva, who kisses like a whirlwind, who kicks up his mischievous side, who rolls around the bed with him as though they've been together as long as he was with Kate. Ziva, who gets the job done, just like Kate would have.

He makes the innuendos, and he laughs and smirks like she expects him to – but they don't really have sex that time and he is glad. She is fun, and definitely sexy, but there are rules about this – and anyway, it's still too soon.

* * *

That night, when the mission is over and they are both back in the office, Tony stays late to finish up the report. Ziva says she'll be right back – and surprises him by returning with a cheese pizza from down the street, just as he is finishing up the report.

He leaves her part of the report on her desk, and the two of them walk out together, chewing a slice of pizza each, Tony holding the box in preparation for another slice.

It's raining slightly, and both their cars are parked outside in the open air. So they linger by the door, eating the pizza and watching the rain – kind of like their first night at the hotel, when they were strangers. Now, they are partners, and they have already shared a bed. Funny, how things happen that way – how life just moves on, never stopping for anyone. It hasn't even been six months since Kate died.

He doesn't realize he said that aloud until Ziva's expression softens, and she says, "You miss her, don't you." She says it like the statement it is; there is no question that he misses her.

He nods slowly, ears reddening. "Yeah. I do."

She doesn't say anything. Instead, she reaches into the box in his hands, and when she takes out the second-to-last slice of pizza, the fingers on her free hand brush lightly against his wrist. She stares at him for only a fraction of a second – but he gets a sudden rush of empathy from her, like she understands. Like there are untold tragedies, unnamed ghosts, suddenly floating in the air between them.

Already, they are familiar with each other's loss. She came into his life right as he lost someone important to him. He learned about her sister in their first real conversation. Who knows who else she has lost, or he? These are stories to come with time.

He finishes up the pizza and throws out the box. The rain helpfully lets up a little. The two of them walk to their cars, and his comes first. She lingers around his car, and he lingers with her, wondering what she wants. She catches his gaze, and he is slightly mesmerized by her eyes – dark and rich and probing. Like she is x-raying not his bones but his soul. Yet – and maybe it's a trick of light or tiredness at this late hour – stars seem to dance mischievously in her eyes, as she beholds him.

His hand is on his door, but he doesn't go in. She comes a little closer. And then she throws him off completely by leaning in and kissing him – lightly, but fearlessly. Her tongue slips between his lips and takes a quick swipe at the roof of his mouth, pulling him in even closer.

She kisses him, but he doesn't stop her.

And when she breaks it, and grins at him like they are naughty schoolchildren, his jaw is slack, and words fail him.

Fortunately, words do not fail her. "I wanted to get it out of the way," she explains in response to his implicit question, casual as anything, though her eyes still glitter playfully. "I could see that you wanted it."

He opens and closes his mouth once, like a baffled goldfish, before he manages a response. "How presumptuous you are, Ms. David."

She merely shrugs. "Well, either way, now you know."

He takes the bait. "Know what?"

She grins even wider. "How it feels to do that without an excuse."

He closes his mouth and just stares at her, a doe in headlights. The rain starts up again, pouring down on his head, but he doesn't seem to notice. She looks up, surveying the rain, not seeming bothered by what she's done or said, or the fact that the rain is going to wreak havoc on her hair. She smirks at him, rivulets of water pouring down the hills and valleys of her face, and proceeds to walk in the opposite direction from which they came.

Evidently, she only came this way in order to be with him.

* * *

They dance around her kiss in the parking lot the next few days – never mentioning it, but never quite forgetting it either, when they catch each other's eye. She doesn't seem embarrassed at all; no, she winks at him, and flirts outrageously with him, unperturbed that the office might perhaps burst into flame some day, with the way she looks at him.

He, for his part, is embarrassed, and a little bit nervous. He can banter with the best of them – he throws her flirtation right back at her, as he is supposed to – but he knows Gibbs, and he knows this team better than she does, and he understands that there are just some things they are not supposed to do. Acting this way with a coworker is one of them. Gibbs would never forgive him; Tony shudders at the thought.

So, even though he is endlessly astonished and amused by Ziva David, Tony's guard stays up and she takes his lead. They circle around one another in the office, slightly electrified whenever they interact. As though everything each of them does turns the other one on a little.

She is exotic in her foreignness; he is exotic in his frank, earnest American-ness. She teases him mostly because he isn't quite as slick as he thinks he is. He thinks she can't tell, when the faint blush comes to his ears or his cheek, when his smile goes from goofy to shy, when he looks at her like a lovable, rambunctious dog that may bite. But she sees it, all of his tells, and she finds them charming. Like he is the puppy that can't clean up after himself, and leaves traces of his mood and his behavior all over the house.

She knows there are rules, and she knows that kissing him, or flirting with him, isn't the best idea. She _is_ guarded; she doesn't like people in her business. But there is something about Tony DiNozzo. She thinks he's funny, and refreshing, and much less insufferable when he isn't trying quite so hard.

And, inevitably, this is just what she does. All her life, she has been a woman playing a man's game. Sex is the goal for the man, always, so she has her fun, and she gives him what he wants – and then she lets the awkwardness from the situation diffuse subsequent kinks in their relationship. Once the sex is demystified, they can work together again, and he will never want to come any closer. There will be nothing else that he wants from her.

This is the game she expected from someone like Tony, someone who likes to ogle at her legs and her ass and her breasts when he thinks she isn't looking. Now she knows that for all his bravado, that isn't his thing. But she still thinks it's a good time, playing the game with him anyway. See how much she can embarrass him by hinting towards what she already knows he wants. See how red his cheeks can go, when he finds his limits and refuses to cross them.

* * *

But then there is that summer that Gibbs scares them to death with his coma and then leaves, and Tony is in charge, and everything is different.

Tony tries not to let on, but of course Ziva knows that he is devastated. She, too, is devastated. The center of their universe, the infallible, omnipresent Gibbs, haunts their halls no more. And Tony, who is ready but also not ready, has to take his place.

He does the best he can. But most of the time, he's strained, and frustrated, and angry. He has had to take on too much too fast, and he's often short with Ziva and McGee, because he is the one they have to report to, ask questions to. He's the one who needs to always have an answer. And while Ziva and McGee get to stay friends, Tony has to be their leader. There is little space for his own grief, or professional indecision. And he can do this, Ziva knows – he wasn't senior field agent for nothing – but he doesn't seem to know it.

So after one particularly bad night, when Tony yells himself hoarse at McGee over a lead that went cold, Ziva quietly whisks him away to her place, and fixes him a drink. And, because there is no one else to talk to, no one else to vent to, he releases a torrent of his thoughts upon her through the night. And she listens, because he needs her to.

That becomes their thing, that summer. The intimacy comes hard and fast and desperate – she is all he has. She knows how he is with loss. And he knows that she deals with her own. And she listens in a way that makes him feel understood, not like McGee, who is very sweet and well-intentioned, but not good with other people's tragedies. The recently vacated center of their universe has left a large void, and he clings to her now, for the way she helps him skirt around the edges of it, holding his hand and calming his raging tempests.

This is the first inkling he has, that she means something to him. That he can tell her things, and she will listen, and he will not be so alone. And this is the first time she really understands the softness, the goodness, in him that she has had glimpses of in the last year. This is when she understands how he is so much more than he seems – and how she likes his private self so much more than the clown that he is when he knows people are watching.

That summer, he is the one who chooses a TV for her and installs it, and buys the inaugural DVDs – a handful of his favorite Bond movies. That summer, they drink wine together, two or three times a week, and just talk about everything. Or, rather, he talks about everything. She chimes in sometimes, when it gets quiet and he is raw and worn out, but for the most part, it's him doing the talking.

That surprises him, but not her. It takes far more than a team leader's hiatus for her to share the things that mean the most to her. But sometimes, she makes the effort, and those moments always feel so gratifying, so hard earned. It gives him something to hold on to, to work for. Going to her apartment at night after work, slowly learning the things that make her tick, is the thing that keeps him together.

In the office, of course, he is Agent DiNozzo and she is Agent David and they never reference the time they spend alone together – but after hours, he is Tony, and she is Ziva, and the universe shrinks down to just the two of them, as they sit on her couch and talk about everything.

* * *

On the hottest day in August, after a week-long heat wave that nearly melts his bones, Tony goes with Ziva to her apartment directly after work. They have just finished a difficult case, and he hasn't slept much, and he is exhausted, and he needs her. So she lets him in, and they flop down on the couch with take-out on the table between them.

She unearths a bottle of champagne, and so of course, they drink too much, the sweat running down their pink faces. Even with her air conditioning, it's hot in her apartment. He slips out of his jacket and unbuttons his shirt – but she disappears into her room to change into sweats hiked up to her knees, and a tank top that sticks to her with sweat. Her calves are a beautiful golden-brown in the dim light – and somehow he is sure that she is well aware of this.

A thin sheen of sweat gleams on her skin – and on his too. His face is a ruddy, unsophisticated pink; wisps of her hair fly out from her ponytail, sticking to her forehead and the back of her neck. She comes to sit beside him, and the two of them face each other, drunk and sticky and intrigued. She has never been so casual, so…not put together, in front of him.

Like the first time, she is the one who initiates the kiss, and he is the one who lets her do it. She straddles his hips and grinds up against him, her hands anchored in his hair. And he lets himself melt from the heat of the air and the heat of her body – lets her give him sloppy, open-mouthed kisses, where their tongues collide and her lips smash against his teeth and they are both wild with lust. Her hands start edging for his shirt, which she untucks and slips beneath, her fingernails digging into the breadth of his back.

And it is wrong, so very wrong – Gibbs would not approve – but the thing is, Gibbs isn't here. The rules are different because Gibbs isn't here. So when Ziva gets to her feet, and pulls him by his tie towards her bedroom, Tony doesn't refuse. He's too tired, too intoxicated, to refuse even if he wanted to.

It's nice, letting someone else take the lead for once. So he gives in, and she gobbles him up, just because he's there. Their kisses are hot and wretched and fierce and hungry – like salt water, filling each other up only to make them ever more hollow.

* * *

They wake up the next morning at dawn, simultaneously. He opens his eyes and turns his head and finds that she is staring right at him, something like blind panic in her eyes. She turns away, presumably to hide the sudden, vulnerable burst of emotion, but it's too late, he already saw it – and she hates herself for that.

They dress and leave her apartment without speaking, hungover in every sense of the word. He has his own car, thank goodness, and stops at home for a quick shower and change of clothes, and shows up late to the office. McGee complains, and Ziva doesn't say a word. She is subdued all morning, tough like overcooked steak, too difficult to approach.

They crossed a line. The rules may be different now with Gibbs gone, but it still feels as though they have done unspeakable wrong. The intimacy that lingers into the next day, and everyday after, shocks and scares them both. They went farther than they intended. They have been laid bare – physically, emotionally – and they aren't sure what to do now.

Sex was supposed to be easy for Ziva. She has slept with informants plenty of times to get what she needs without batting an eyelid, and she has slept with her partners at Mossad, too, just because the nights are lonely and cold and being so close to one another, even if just for a couple of hours, meant that they trusted her, and would remain focused on the mission instead of her ass.

Sex was a business transaction, a means to an end. And somehow, it doesn't feel quite that neat and simple this time.

It takes her a couple of days to work it out, but she decides that it's different because of Tony. Tony, who brags about all the dates he gets, but doesn't have nearly as much sex as he lets on. Tony, who is actually quite guarded, yet lets her in, not only because he trusts her but because he actually likes her.

Tony, who is their team leader, who may just ruin everything.

* * *

That's why she doesn't tell him, when she is framed for murder and she is desperately trying to figure out what to do.

She can't tell him. Instead of diverting his attention from her body to their mission, she seems to have diverted his attention towards her mind, her heart, all the problematic little corners she keeps in the dark. He is _so concerned_. And she doesn't need his concern. She needs him to be focused and objective and help her. But, despite everything she has seen of his leadership all summer, she doesn't trust him to do so. He is Tony the clown, Tony who doesn't understand – and anyway, it's easier for all of them if she doesn't drag them into her messes. She tries, so hard, to keep them away.

She chooses Gibbs instead, because his job, his livelihood, is not at stake. And then there's that understanding between them: he knows who she is, he knows what she did, and though she knows that he loves her, it will still be business between them. He knows how to keep his distance. He won't be _so concerned_. He will be mad at her for dragging him out of retirement. But he'll help her anyway and then disappear. Like phoning in a favor.

She does not expect Tony and the rest of the team to come gallivanting into Gibbs's basement to help her anyway.

Gibbs tells Tony to take Ziva and hunt down the safe house. They go upstairs without a word, walk briskly towards the front door – but when they get outside, Tony snatches Ziva's wrist and roughly turns her around to face him. She inhales sharply in surprise, but her eyes are hard and defiant, same as his.

"What?" she hisses. "We have a job to do."

"Then I'll get straight to the point. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Anything!" he explodes. "You told Abby not to tell any of us that you were in contact. You disappear and the FBI is on our asses about some assassination. We were worried about you, Ziva."

She exhales slowly, deeply; her voice is deadly calm. "I was handling it."

"By calling Gibbs out of retirement!" He is as loud and outraged as she is cool and unruffled.

"I needed a favor."

"You could have asked me."

"Tony, you had enough to deal with." Her eyes narrow, as if to remind him, cruelly, of all the nights he spent with her, thinking he could trust her.

He raises his eyebrows, and for a split second she can see the shock and the hurt in his face as though he is a color-coded road map. But the moment passes, and he is back to being pissed.

"You should have told me. You should have trusted me."

But she is at the end of her patience. Before she can stop herself, she snaps, "Just because we slept together, doesn't mean I have to trust you."

The long resulting silence – stunned, angry, disbelieving – tells her, painfully, that he disagrees.

But he doesn't say another word. Just storms past her to the car, ready to clear her name. And she follows him, buries this conversation down into her darkest depths, as usual, because this is what she has to do. This is the job she signed up for.

The car rumbles to a start and they drive off.

* * *

And this is why things are so different now between them, since that hot August night. Because she didn't sleep with Agent DiNozzo, the talented senior field agent with an armor of humor around his heart. She slept with Tony. And now she doesn't know who, exactly, slept with him. Because before, she thought it was Agent David, his partner and coworker, the woman who never shies away from sex – but now, she isn't so sure.

In that first moment when he saw her in Gibbs's basement, alive and unhurt and safe – before she yelled at him – he gave her a look that held such determined warmth and intimacy that it shone on her with the might of the sun, almost blinding her. And it makes her wonder if she had accidentally exposed a different part of herself that night – someone softer, maybe even worth loving. Someone who was actually a part of something now – a little family, who could be _so concerned _but also businesslike, who will protect their own, not because there is a debt to be owed or a need to be fulfilled, but simply because they care about her. She can't remember the last time anyone looked at her like that.

But he isn't looking at her like that anymore. He isn't looking at her at all. And she doesn't blame him, really. This is, in effect, what she wanted him to do all along. Stop thinking about her in the personal sense, and get the job done.

She just hadn't been prepared to win this battle, and find her victory so bittersweet.

* * *

Gibbs returns to NCIS, which means that things should start going back to normal – but the thing is, they never really do. Normal was a time and a feeling, and neither is present anymore.

The team had been blasted apart and put back together clumsily, carelessly – and it takes a while for for each of them to pick the shrapnel out of their skin, search through the debris and see what – and who – is left.

The trappings of normalcy provide merciful structure – grabbing their gear, going to a crime scene, solving a murder, seeing what Abby's got and bantering along the way – but now, Tony has had a taste of power, and he doesn't submit so easily to Gibbs's hard-and-fast judgments. He pipes up when something seems off. And McGee, who was just their little probie, had a taste of being senior field agent – and he is smarter, more practical, less willing to endure Tony's jokes at his expense.

And Ziva – well, Ziva is a proper teammate now. She is the one Tony trusts with his life. She is the one who reads between the lines, who is personally invested in all of them the way they are in her – a momentous feat, considering her history. The summer without Gibbs has brought her deeply into their fold.

The team is different now, but stronger, in a way. None of them are quite so afraid anymore. They are a unit that has survived a lot.

That is why Tony is simultaneously proud and afraid of the assignment that Jenny gives him: getting close to Jeanne Benoit.

His team is small, but it is his family and they are still recovering from a difficult year. Tony doesn't want to have to keep this secret from them, enormous and explosive as it is. But Jenny is the director, and when she gives an order, he has to listen. He assumes his new identity and begins the secret-keeping.

* * *

Jeanne is an assignment, and one Tony hopes to finish as quickly as possible, so he tells himself to keep it professional. He is flirty and charming and likeable – he plays his role well – and quickly wins Jeanne's trust. She is an assignment, but just as quickly as she, he still finds himself liking her personally. She is successful and sweet, and she works almost as much as he does. She understands about dedication. He hasn't felt that connection to someone in years and years, if at all.

But, most puzzlingly and intriguingly of all, he finds that she isn't afraid of her feelings. Where Tony – and the rest of his team, to an extent – buries the personal in order to focus on the professional, Jeanne does not struggle with romance, or vulnerability. She draws her strength from it. She blossoms for him, and he respects that about her. It's the reason why he waits so long to sleep with her.

As he has recently learned, sex isn't always carefree, no strings attached. Especially in a long, meaningful relationship. Intimacy can bring people together, but it can easily tear them apart. In Jeanne's case, it is a lose-lose situation – he is afraid of both scenarios. As time goes on, he feels himself falling for her, a little bit and then a lot, and he isn't sure, anymore, what he wants, what the endgame is going to be.

He always knew, inevitably, that he would hurt her. It's the nature of the business. But after what they have shared, the hurt will be cataclysmic, and he wants to shield her from the worst of it. He wants to delay the inevitable as long as he can, even if it means it hurts them both that much more when it finally comes to pass. He has grown into this new role as Tony DiNardo – someone who has a beautiful girlfriend to text and tease and kiss and come home to after work. He gets to be someone he doesn't always get to be – himself. And she makes it so easy to open himself up to her, because she reciprocates, and lets him into her world.

It is new to him, being so emotionally open with another person. Somewhere along the line, the line between personal and professional blurs – and the night of the explosion that kills Paula Cassidy, the night after the rock-climbing fiasco, he goes to her place, and tells her he loves her, and he means it. And he knows it will be both of their undoing.

* * *

Of course, the transformation in Tony does not go unnoticed by Ziva. In the first days of his assignment, she thinks that he is sick. He tells her he is seeing a doctor – which is technically true – but if anything, that only increases her worry. Because if Tony is ill – well, that is not something she wants him to go through alone. And it isn't just personal. An illness will compromise his ability to work, which compromises their trust – barely patched since the assassination frame-up – in the field. Which, of course, compromises both of their lives.

So one day, when they go out for an interview, she asks him, "Has the doctor told you what you have?"

He wrinkles his nose in confusion. "What?"

"The doctor. The one you're seeing. Did he tell you what you have?"

"_She_," Tony corrects, "and…um…no. Tests haven't come in yet."

"But you would tell me when you found out?"

He turns on his megawatt toothpaste-ad grin at her. "Oh, so now you're worried about me. Why?"

"I am allowed to be concerned," she points out dryly. "We do work together. My life depends on whether or not you are able to do your job.

He merely chuckles. "If that's what is worrying you, sweetheart, then allow me to reassure you – I am perfectly fine and capable of doing my job."

He knows how she is. He figures that by playing it aloof and casual, she'll stay off the scent because he is just Tony the clown, not worth the extra concern. But she is merely frustrated – and not convinced. He will have to be careful what he leaves lying around on his desk.

* * *

They don't talk about the assignment again after that. He gets lost in Jeanne and the possibility of loving her, even if he knows that it can't last – and Ziva watches from afar, quietly but closely.

She sees the little ways in which he changes. How he stops ogling and flirting with women; how he keeps anxiously watching his other cell phone, like it's a puppy about to urinate on the carpet; how he disappears from the office so cheerfully, like he doesn't care what Gibbs will do to him because there is something better waiting for him.

She knows he isn't sick, that it was a lie he let her believe in order to throw her off. He is seeing someone, and it is serious, and she makes him walk into the office every morning happy in a way she has never seen him.

She knows how he is when he gets a girl's phone number, or an extra good cup of coffee, and that's not the kind of happiness that she sees on his face anymore. This kind – it's more muted, and yet it glows brighter. Like a light has been ignited behind his eyes. Even though he is still Tony, working the cases and being a smart aleck, when attention diverts from him, he smiles like he has a secret. Like he has the sun in his pocket, for himself and no one else.

He isn't terminally ill, but he _is _lovesick – and the transformation is fascinating.

He doesn't make a big deal about it, but he is softer around the edges, and his eyes are sunnier, and he whistles sometimes as he walks out to the car for an assignment, or down the hall to the bathroom. And he is not the type to whistle unless there is something to celebrate.

Despite their history, Ziva is sincerely happy for him. She has screwed things up between them before, but she knows that he is a good man, and if he has a shot at happiness, the kind that fizzes inside him now, like bubbles in champagne – well, he should go for it. Whatever they are doing seems to be working.

He smiles all the time now, wide and goofy and genuine. It's nice to see. Out of all of them, it seems fitting that Tony is the one who gets a happy ending, if just for a little while. Last summer, she saw the romantic in him, the one who wanted a woman to tell his secrets to, the little ones as well as the big ones. She can't be that for him, of course, but now there is a woman who _can_ do that for him. And he should keep her close, if she is the one he wants.

Ziva is unexpectedly wistful, though, watching Tony leave work early, practically skipping to the elevator. Jeanne's presence in Tony's life has sufficiently mellowed him out enough to bring his relationship with Ziva back to its usual, teasing self – and yet, Ziva is protective of the man she got to know, of the man presumably sleeping with this other woman.

It's not like she wants him for herself – of course not. She has been happily single for many years now, because men always want something from her and she doesn't have any more she is willing to give them. She doesn't want to spoil her relationship with Tony in that way.

No, it's better that they are just coworkers, very platonic friends at most. She understands the rules better now, in her second year on the team. There are lines that should not be crossed – and though they managed to get back from their transgression, she isn't sure they would be so lucky a second time. But she still can't help but be concerned for him, because she sees him everyday and their job requires them to trust each other in a way most people never have to consider trusting each other, and that kind of trust – it changes things. It changes the way she looks at him and cares about him.

She hopes that this woman, whoever she is, can give Tony what he is looking for. Because Ziva can tell that this is serous for him – and if his girlfriend hurts him in any way, well…Ziva has plenty of assassins on call if necessary.

* * *

But then the mission blows up in Tony's face, and Ziva and everyone else find out the truth, and Tony shuts down almost completely, refusing to talk about it. Refusing to even think about it. Because it _was _real for him, and now she is gone, and he feels lost again. Lost, and all alone.

Ziva knows that he wants his space – and goodness knows she understands about wanting space after a tragedy – but at the same time, she isn't sure if space is really what he _needs_. She can smell the alcohol on him sometimes in the morning, left over from last night, and she sees the shadows under his eyes. She sees him overcompensating with the jokes and the bounciness, as though none of them can see that he is hurting, badly.

A couple of weeks after the disastrous Le Grenoille mission, Ziva corners Tony in the men's room, and asks him if he wants to come over for pizza and wine. Her treat.

But he declines. He knows that she means well, and he knows what she is trying to do – but he remembers the last time they had pizza and wine together, and he doesn't want to go there again. Not now, not with her. If he has learned anything, it is that they are not the kind of people who should get personal with each other.

"Thanks," he tells her, and means it, as he leaves for the elevator. Ziva perches herself on her desk and watches him go, looking thoughtful.

* * *

Though Tony didn't want pizza with Ziva, he does decide he needs a drink – so he goes to his favorite bar, a quiet little place about a ten minute drive away, and orders a bourbon. He's had a growing fondness for bourbon ever sine Gibbs left.

After his third helping, when he is getting a little tipsy, Ziva walks into the bar, still in her work clothes. She smiles at him and takes the seat beside him, and orders a martini for herself. Tony eyes her up and down, surprised and suspicious.

"Are you following me?" he asks in a bit of a slur.

"No." Her martini comes, and she takes a small sip.

"What are you doing here?"

"I wanted to make sure you were okay," she says. "I went to your place to check on you, but you weren't there."

"So how'd you know to come to this bar?"

"Lucky guess."

But he keeps staring at her expectantly, so she chuckles and explains, "I had a hunch that you would need a drink, and I know this is your favorite bar."

"Oh." He raises his glass glumly to her, and clinks it against hers. "Cheers."

He takes a big gulp of his drink, but she only takes a tiny one. He polishes off the bourbon in another sip, and raises his hand to ask for another. He wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and wonders whether to look at the bar counter or at her. He chooses the counter; she is giving him one of her intense, x-ray stares, and he doesn't care to be x-rayed right now.

"You know, you didn't have to come find me," he tells her, after his fifth drink. "I'm fine. You know. Dandy."

They both know he isn't, but she stays silent anyway, takes another little sip of her martini. That silence is unbearable – it's the very reason he left his apartment, and came here instead, where there is at least an illusion of company. He rubs his face in his hands, and then tells her, "I don't know what your problem is. I don't know what _my_ problem is. It happened. It's over. Jenny told me what to do and I did it, okay?"

She nods. "I know."

"It's not fair."

"I know."

He keeps talking like this, for hours. He's getting steadily drunker, slurring his words and being far too honest. He had told himself he wouldn't do this again with her – but she, like Jeanne, makes it so easy for him to talk. Because though they have history, and though he doesn't quite understand what they are, she listens to him and despite herself, she feels safe to him.

He keeps his life small – he can't take many disappointments like the blow-up with Jeanne – so Ziva is his two AM emergency call. She fits right where the rest of them don't. Abby is too effusive, overflowing with feelings and works; McGee is sweet, but doesn't quite understand the things that keep Tony up at night; and Gibbs – well, his muteness can be intimidating, and anyway, there are just some things you don't tell your boss about your head-space.

So Ziva, with her not-intimidating silence, and the way she understands loss – the way she understood his from the beginning – is all he's got.

So he lets himself need her tonight, because the words are spilling out of his mouth before he can stop them, because he feels weak and spent, and she came to find him even though he told her not to. And she lets him need her – even though she isn't good at being needed.

It's strange, really. The way he talks and talks makes things easy for her. He doesn't make it feel like he's taking anything from her. His words just bounce off of her, and fall into her lap, and she chooses which ones to keep. There isn't any obligation. She stays with him because he needs her, and that's the only reason. And she has never had that kind of relationship with anyone before – not since her little sister, who wore perfume and went dancing and cried on Ziva's shoulder when a boy broke her heart. Her little sister, who is dead, who can't need Ziva anymore – but whom Ziva still needs sometimes, to remind her that there is still beauty in humanity.

It's kind of nice, though, being here for someone now. Being able to be enough for someone. Seeing the beauty in Tony's honesty. He talks and she listens, her martini and his bourbon and this bar and this world forgotten. Like somehow, this is the place they are both meant to be tonight.

* * *

He is smashed out of his mind, by the time Ziva decides it is time to drive him home. Ziva leaves a few bills on the counter for the bartender, and says, "Hey, Tony. Let's go."

But Tony shakes his head. "Nah. Nah, you go. I'll see you tomorrow at work."

She sighs. So he's one of _those_ drunks. She puts her hand firmly on his shoulder and says, "I am going to drive you home. Come on. We are going now."

But he stays put – sways slightly, but remains seated resolutely on his stool. Ziva considers using physical force, but the poor man is too intoxicated; it wouldn't be fair. She tries to think about what to do, how to get him out of here. But as she does so, his hand finds hers on the bar counter, and leans in close to her – so close that their noses almost touch. She stops breathing; he can hear the faint noise in her throat. She smells sweet, but also spicy, a little salty.

Her hair is in a ponytail, but several wispy curls have gotten free through the course of the day. He twirls one strand of her hair between his first two fingers, and smiles sheepishly, tenderly, at it. At her. He is still entirely too close; she can smell the bourbon on his breath as powerfully as if she had drunk it herself.

She knows what he's doing. He's lonely, and sad, and extremely inebriated, and he has mistaken her presence at the bar tonight for physical intimacy. His forehead presses against hers; he grins, and brushes his nose against her like a polar bear kiss, the strand of her hair still curled around his finger.

She remembers the last time they did this. And she can feel her body responding to him, wanting him too. Sexual curiosity has always been a part of their electricity and banter – they are both strong, attractive personalities, after all – and after doing it once, it's natural that they should want to do it again. Especially on a night like this, when it is late and they both have alcohol in their system, and he wants a way to numb himself up against what he is feeling.

But it's not right. She puts her hand on his, gently forces him to let her hair go. She takes a step away from him, her eyes boring into his like construction drills.

"Not tonight," she says, as softly as she can. "Not like this."

That seems to bring him back to his senses a little bit – but because of all the bourbon, his guard isn't as efficient, and she can see his disappointment. "No, I guess not."

"Look, I get it," she says in a fierce undertone. "Okay? I do. And I've made the same mistake. You think it's what you want, but it's not. Let me take you home."

He doesn't say anything, or fight her after that. He lets her put his arm around her shoulder, and lead him out to her car, where she opens the front door for him and leans over him to put his seatbelt on. He gets a whiff of her scent again – the one that smells like that summer. Strangely, it comforts him.

The smell of her, and the motion of the car – Ziva takes some care driving this time, so that she doesn't jolt Tony or make him sick – puts him to sleep long before she gets him to his apartment. She wakes him as carefully as she can, and leads him to his apartment, lets him fall into bed fully clothed.

There is nothing more she can do for him tonight – and chances are he won't remember much in the morning. She takes off his shoes, and then leaves his apartment and goes home, wondering why they do what they do, what this means for them now.

* * *

Indeed, Tony does not remember much of the previous night the next morning – but he does mercifully stop drinking to blackout after that. He is still a mess, but the team is there for him, and so is Ziva. She keeps both of their secrets, in her quiet way, and he is grateful for it.

They have an understanding now, between each other. Their role in each other's lives is vague, but they don't need to define it. They just try to keep each other safe. Not merely professionally, but in any way the other will let them.

Of course, this means that Tony isn't allowed much access into Ziva's life. She has always been private, and their relationship doesn't change this much. He always lets her in deeper than she lets him in. And he tells himself that it's okay, because that's just who she is – but he still worries from afar, even when she makes it clear that she doesn't want his sympathy. Like when they all underwent the investigation for Le Grenouille's murder. Like when she was shaken up so badly after Andy Hoffman nearly killed her.

There is chaos in the agency right now, but he is steady and he is with her. And though she won't tell him her secrets – she is never going to be as open as he is – she lets him stand with her. It is all she can give him, and he takes it.

* * *

But then Jenny is killed, and their entire world is thrown up in the air again.

The guilt is corrosive. It eats Tony alive – another person he could not save. But this time, he doesn't have her with him to share the grief, because this is the summer that the new director, Vance, splits them up and sends them away. Tony, to the destroyer, McGee to the basement, and Ziva, to Israel.

He wants to call her, sometimes, when he spends those long nights at sea, trying not to vomit as the ship sails through choppy waters. She was there with him that day, she understands what happened – and she knows him. Knows him better than pretty much everyone else.

But alcohol, as it turns out, is very understanding too. Because where she would have held his hand as he braved his heartache, alcohol lets him drown it out – and the distraction is very welcome.

* * *

Ziva is overseas on that assignment when she meets Michael Rivkin – and she, too, needs a distraction. Michael is charming and good-looking, and a Mossad agent, so he knows the job and its enormous weight. That's part of the reason she likes him so much.

They sleep together between missions, when Ziva is in Tel-Aviv about to leave for her next assignment. It feels so normal, in a way, like coming home – the pressure of a job, sex in a dark corner on borrowed time. It reminds her of who she was – who she still is. This work, and its little benefits, is the best way to move on. She buries the grief for Jenny – a friend as well as the director – beneath long flights, undercover surveillance, a night in a cheap motel with Michael Rivkin.

Through the years, she has learned that one must always do whatever is necessary to survive. These are the ways that she knows how. She doesn't indulge the futile anger or anguish that tempts her; she plows ahead, never thinking about any moment except the one she is in, because no one can disappoint you if you never expect anything.

* * *

She had missed Tony terribly, she realizes, when they are reunited again – far longer yet also far sooner than expected. She thought she was home when she was running missions for Mossad – but instead, she finds that she is really home when she lays eyes on Gibbs and Tony, and Tony smiles at her, remarking that she got a serious tan.

There is work to do, but when they get a moment, checking a cabin on the Destroyer, he asks, "Are you all right? I heard about the bomb blast in Morocco."

"I am fine," she assures him, grinning as she searches a drawer of a petty officer's undergarments. "They pitched me up and I am back at work."

"Patched," he corrects.

"Right."

He waits a beat, then says, "I missed you, you know."

"I missed you too."

"Are you back in D.C.?"

"For now."

"I don't know when they're finally going to get me out of this hellhole," says Tony, gesturing around to the ship. "I don't know how much longer I can take on here, honestly."

"You will be all right," she promises him. "Let Gibbs figure it out with Vance. I am sure we will be back on the team soon."

"Yeah, but now I've seen you and Gibbs – and even McGoo on video chat – and now I'm going to go certifiably crazy trapped on this ship by myself," he confesses.

She chuckles softly, puts a hand to his shoulder. "We will bring you home. Promise."

"You sure you can keep that promise?" He tries to play it off as a joke, but his eyes are worried.

She nods. "I will assassinate whoever needs assassinating to get you back to D.C."

He laughs at that – really laughs, for the first time in months. The sound is a little unfamiliar, but it feels good, warm. "Thanks, Ziva."

She winks at him. "Don't mention it."

* * *

The first night Tony gets back to D.C. is bliss. He has such enormous affection for every tiny thing about the building – the parking lot, the orange walls, his desk and his stapler and of course all the decorations that Abby made to welcome him home. Tony, McGee, Ziva, Abby, and Ducky stay up late into the night, swapping stories of the summer, reveling in the joy of being reunited once more.

It is that night, when Tony is unpacking the box of his personal items at his desk, that Ziva finds the photos. They fall out with a couple of other things on the floor, and Ziva picks them up before Tony can snatch them away from her.

They are the pictures from LA, when she was in a bikini by the pool – the pictures she had told him to delete. Ziva's hands go to her hips, and she raises an eyebrow that suggests death will be imminent. Tony grins, chuckles nervously, and takes several steps back away from her.

"Yeah, um…ahem. Sorry about that, Ziva. It's just…you know, on a ship, about five thousand guys, practically _no_ women around, missing home…"

She examines the picture closely, and then points to a small hole near the top of the photograph. "Did you have this hanging up on your wall?"

"Um…" He says nothing, but the blush in his cheeks gives him away.

There are three photographs, all taken at different angles, but all prominently featuring her ass. She remembers the day – hot, a little muggy, but bright. They were supposed to take the afternoon for themselves, but she wanted to stay close to Jenny and he wanted to have an adventure. He took the pictures as a laugh. She was never upset that he took them; she intended to delete them off the camera when they got home. Strangely, seeing them now in her hands – a little faded, crumpled in the corners, with the holes where he had pinned them up – touches her. She can understand about missing someone.

So she clears her throats and hands him the pictures back. "Destroy them," she says, and spares his life.

* * *

Things are supposed to be different now. No more secrets, no more lies. The team should settle in again and relearn their routine, so disrupted over the past few years. But unfortunately, things are not as different as Tony thought they would be.

The mole hunt with Langer and Lee sends Tony into a tailspin. He sees now, that he was part of a much bigger plan – but that doesn't make him feel much better about the whole thing. The war game tips him over the edge – because he is tired of games. He is tired of never knowing the whole picture, until it's convenient for somebody to tell him.

No more secrets, no more lies. Is that too much to ask?

* * *

In the midst of the mole turmoil, Rivkin pays an unexpected visit to D.C., and asks Ziva to meet him. Work is busy, and honestly, she had not intended to ever see Rivkin again after their one night – but after Lee and Bankston are caught, and the worry over the mole is over, she changes her mind at the last second and meets Rivkin on his last night in D.C. They have dinner at a sidewalk café, and he kisses her exquisitely on the side of the road – and he tells her that the only reason he doesn't take her back to his hotel room is because he is on the first flight out to Tel-Aviv in the morning.

Admittedly, she enjoys the evening. She enjoys seeing Rivkin. They email back and forth, and he calls her sometimes when he isn't on assignment. They talk into the night about everything and nothing – and she feels herself relaxing into this relationship.

He links her back to the older part of her life, that reckless girl she used to be – and she finds that her recklessness still thrives inside of her. Because her life used to be big and chaotic and restless, bouncing around from country to country, always filled with a sense of purpose. Her life is smaller now – and though she loves her family, and her team, she remains fitful.

She isn't always happy in D.C. This has been home for only a few years; her entire life is scattered in Israel and the dingiest corners of Europe, East Asia, South America. She is torn apart – and nobody seems to understand this about her except Michael.

He asks her once, on the phone late at night, if she has ever wanted to come back to Mossad. Her father still speaks highly, and often, about her. And she can only coyly dodge his question and change the subject, because she really doesn't know if she wants to stay or go. Michael reminds her of the life she once had, the place and the time she had once called home – and it's hard to let that go. Old habits die hard.

This is the primary reason Ziva does not tell Tony about Michael Rivkin. She obviously wants to avoid the endless list of questions he would be sure to devise about any boyfriend of hers – but also because, as smart and concerned as Tony is, she doesn't want him near that old scary part of her that Michael knows. She doesn't want Tony to expect anything from her.

There are some things that Tony simply can't understand. Like how she can love Tony and NCIS, and Michael and Mossad, simultaneously. Like how loyalty is a messy thing, not always as cut and dry as Tony or Gibbs make it out to be.

Tony suspects she has a boyfriend – he rifles through her desk and even her trash like a rambunctious twelve-year-old – but she doesn't want to confirm his suspicions. Even though she knows how tired he is of secrets after Jenny and Jeanne, this is one secret she is determined to keep anyway.

It's not because she wants to lie to him, or spite him in some way. It's just because there are certain demons better fought alone, and she believes it is within his power to grant her this little bit of privacy.

* * *

But the question of her privacy gets even more complicated when the team goes to LA to track down that sleeper cell, and Michael Rivkin is in the center of the whole mess, and Gibbs and Tony start asking too many unnecessary yet necessary questions.

Ziva has no idea what Rivkin's mission is – they never talk about work, they know better – so it does come as a surprise, when it turns out that Rivkin might be a Hamas agent rather than a Mossad one. And she knows that she should own up to her relationship with him, even if it is personal rather than professional – but somehow, she cannot bring herself to say anything.

Rivkin's relationship with Ziva has nothing to do with the mission in question. She doesn't know anything about what he's doing in Washington; she has no new information to give. She would only cast a suspicious light upon herself if she said anything. With her history, she would cause more problems than answer questions – and she would divert the investigation away from the issue to focus on the entirely mundane question of her half-baked love life.

The problem is, just because she doesn't say anything, doesn't mean a suspicious light won't fall on her anyway. Because Tony won't stop investigating into her personal life, and he knows about Michael, and he starts questioning her loyalty. Which infuriates Ziva, because what does he know about her circumstances? What does he know about all she has given in the name of loyalty? What does he know about what Michael means to her?

He pulls her into the elevator and flips the emergency switch, so that they are alone, bathed in that ghostly blue light – he, with his arms crossed, staring at her, and she, with her hands on her hips in battle position, staring right back at him.

"I am tired of us keeping secrets from each other," he informs her, his voice as cold as the steel walls around them. "I am tired of pretending. Tell me what you know about Michael Rivkin."

And it seems like a fair question to ask, really, considering the investigation they are running. But that doesn't mean she is ready to talk.

"Mind your own business," she hisses at him.

She moves to flip the emergency switch again, but Tony blocks her, and grabs onto her wrist.

"Do you like your hand? Because I will break it right here and now. Do _not_ push me," she warns.

But he isn't afraid of her anymore. "Start talking."

"Now who doesn't trust who?"

"This has nothing to do with trusting you. Which you know that I do."

"Do you?"

He looks at her like she slapped him across the face. "Just answer the question and we won't have to have this conversation."

"You know as well as I do that it will not end there. It will never end there."

She glares bloody murder at him, and finally twists his arm so that he lets go of her hand, and she flips the emergency switch. The lights are back to bright white, and the elevator glides back to their floor.

"Maybe later, when you ask nicely," she remarks acidly, as she gets off the elevator and marches to her desk.

* * *

But there isn't time to ask her. Not after that. Because the very next morning, they investigate the death of the ICE agent, and they are forced to drop the matter and act cordially towards one another once more. They work late into the night on the case, and into the next day – and later that evening is when Tony drives out to Ziva's apartment in order to have their conversation.

And that is the evening he meets Michael Rivkin in Ziva's living room, high as a kite but still utterly deadly.

The fight is a blur of blood and punches and pain and broken glass. But when it's over, Tony is alive, and Michael is the one with glass in his gut, coughing up blood. The last thing he ever sees is Ziva's ceiling. And then Ziva herself bursts through the door, gun pointed straight at Tony, her eyes so dangerous that the assassin she has suppressed all this time almost explodes to the surface and kills him where he lays.

But she doesn't do that. She calls an ambulance, and refuses to even look at Tony as she climbs into the ambulance alongside Rivkin, and rides to the hospital. Tony, and his bloodied suit, and his broken arm, are hardly a concern.

Because suddenly, loyalty isn't so complicated anymore. It's very simple. Ziva can never, ever trust Tony DiNozzo again.

* * *

The blows just keep coming. Her apartment is bombed, and the investigation is underway, and she must fly to Israel to answer to her father, and Tony still thinks what he did was justifiable. But it isn't. She reads every word of his report so many times, and yet the words are dizzying and they don't make any sense, and she eventually rips her copy apart, like a feral savage, into black-and-white confetti on her bathroom floor.

He put his entire career on the line for her, and she hates him for it. She hates herself for letting it get this far, this messy. She hates herself for not keeping a closer watch on DiNozzo the last few months. She let things get messy and soft, and she let herself feel things for Tony – she let herself _trust_ him, that was her mistake – and now look at this mess. Look at the blood and the thorns scattered everywhere their eyes can see.

What McGee finds on the laptop proved that Michael was working for Hamas, that he duped Mossad and therefore Ziva. In a way, she almost expected that. It's something she would have expected years ago, when she lived his life, when she knew trust was a smoke screen, dissolved at the slightest touch.

But _Tony_. For Tony to betray her too – for Tony to come to her apartment and have the audacity to murder a man he knew meant something to her – and this just after questioning her own loyalty to NCIS – is unforgivable. And she will not forget it until her dying day, and perhaps not even then.

Because Tony is the good guy. Though she has had an admittedly spotty record of trusting him entirely when the moment calls for it, she does trust him to do what's right. That's what she expects from him. Because he is strong and capable and he has sharp instincts. She trusts him when they're out in the field on a mission, and she has done so for years. She even started to trust him off the field, like an idiot, thinking anyone can be trusted with any sliver of her heart.

He is supposed to be the one who never betrayed her. And now he has. He's just like the rest of them that way - petty, jealous, undependable. How can he expect her to move on from this?

* * *

Her father tells her, unknowingly, behind a pane of glass, that Rivkin was always acting under his orders.

Hadar tells her, "Rivkin was in chaos. You knew. And yet you decided not to tell your father. You tried to protect Rivkin. But in truth, you are the reason he is dead."

It is such a confusing jumble of broken promises and misplaced loyalties. For all her righteous fury, she herself is not exempt from blame either. There is just so much blame to go around.

Her father has betrayed her. Rivkin has betrayed her. Tony has betrayed her. And Michael Rivkin is dead now. Dead by Tony's hand. And she is the one standing in the middle, unable to stay, unable to go. Unable to decide what this means, or how to release the rage churning black inside her.

This is the end of the line. Where else is there to go? She can't even fathom it.

* * *

_I guess you read my report. _

_I memorized it! You could have left it at that! You could have walked away, but no. You let him up. You put a bullet in his chest. _

_You weren't there. _

_You could have put one in his leg. _

_You. Weren't. There. _

_But I should have been. _

_You loved him. _

_I guess I'll never know._

* * *

She doesn't get on the plane to go back to D.C. She stands on the tarmac and watches it fly, higher and higher and farther and farther away, until it is a pinprick against the clouds, until it is no more. She tells herself she is staying because Eli is blood, because blood matters – but really, it's because she can't bear to even look at Tony's face again.

She realizes now, bitterly, that she had made the egregious error of holding him to a higher standard than she normally held men. Of all the betrayals she has faced in the past weeks, his stings the most. His is the one that burns. All those nights they spent talking, the nights of James Bond and Chinese take-out, every kiss they ever shared – she watched that movie with him, _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind _with him, and she would give anything now, to undergo that procedure, and erase him from her head. Anything not to remember all the shades with which she had loved him – yes, loved him – for four years.

So she goes on that death mission in Somalia resigned, exhausted, colorless – a ghost living inside her skin. Her father's last betrayal is another sucker-punch to her gut, but she is numb and resigned and cognizant of the fact that this is just what she deserves. She is young in years, but ancient in sin. The bridges to Israel and to D.C. have all been burned, charred beyond recognition.

There is no place on this Earth left for her.

* * *

And yet, there is strange freedom in being so untethered, so cut off and alone. There is nothing left to hurt her with.

They capture her in Somalia, and she lets them do what they want to her. Life and death mean nothing to her anymore. She comes to peace with them under the heat of the desert sun. She is indifferent and therefore invincible.

They can't break her if she is already broken.

* * *

They left Ziva behind in Israel, but in the days after the team returns home, Tony muses that he left something of himself behind as well – something essential and electric and alive, something irrepressible and irreplaceable. Because though his arm heals and he returns to field work as usual, he is listless, flat, like a light has been extinguished inside his very core.

He tries to move on – they try to find a new substitute for Ziva – but he is so pervasively, stubbornly, hollow without her. The events in May refuse to erase themselves, or even fade, from his memory. Because he put his career on the line for her, and yeah, he did, he loved her – but it wasn't enough. None of it was enough. He survived the night in her apartment, and she hated him for it.

If Kate was his toes, leaving him off-balance when she left, Ziva is his liver. It has been wrenched from his gut, and there is only so long he can live without it. Without her.

Finding her is the only thing that matters, then. Because if Ziva becomes another casualty, another person that he can't save, he fears he will literally lose his mind.

And when he can't find her, when he realizes that she is lying dead at the bottom of some desolate patch of ocean, revenge becomes the only thing that matters. There is no real hope here, just a few pixels on a computer screen that might lead them to her killer – but it's enough. Enough to sustain him.

He couldn't save her in life. He got too close and he hurt her. He killed Michael Rivkin. But if he can avenge her – well, that's better than nothing.

* * *

So even though he gets captured, even though it was a far shot to begin with, even though he realizes that he will have to die here, it's okay. It's okay. He was only barely living in D.C., after Ziva anyway, and this seems a fitting way to go – coming on a valiant death mission because the closest friend he's ever had is dead.

He has no expectations. He isn't afraid of the gun Saleem Ulman puts in his face. The metal is a cold kiss upon his forehead – it's actually refreshing, in the sticky desert air.

They can't break him if he is already broken.

* * *

To say that Tony and Ziva are then surprised to each other under in their prison cell is like saying that the North African desert is a little bit warm.

The one in their million-to-one shot won out. She is here. Bruised, battered, but alive. The truth serum makes him hazy and, yes, over-honest – but all the life comes flooding back to his body, seeing her here. She is a survivor, and their efforts paid off – and even though in her mind she was already dead, merely waiting for her body to catch up, even though she isn't entirely sure she wants to live, Tony and McGee and Gibbs are going to bring her home again. Back to NCIS, where she belongs. Where she has always belonged.

It hardly makes sense to her, that they are here, and Gibbs fired his shots, and there is a plane outside waiting to take her away. He asks her, "Can you fight?" And for the first time in her life, she just stares blankly at him, dazed and beyond rational thought, because she is not here to fight. She is here to die. And yet, he has other plans.

They save her. They put her on a plane and bring her back to D.C., where the September air is cool and sweet, and the landscaping is immaculate, and nobody dreams of the horrors taking place across the world.

They bring her back. She is like a newborn baby, blinking her eyes at the world for the first time. It doesn't seem real. It's like they have somehow fashioned her a body from her ashes, and suddenly she has a future.

Every breath, every movement of muscle, is a gift and a miracle. And also a curse.

* * *

He tip-toes around her once they get back. Everybody does – everybody except Abby, who rushes right in and lifts Ziva off her feet in a bone-crunching hug. But Abby is Abby, and she can do that. She can say what the rest of them can't. That they love her, that they missed her. That they are glad she is alive. That now she is here and she is safe.

She stays at the navy lodge for a couple of weeks, while she figures out the practical details – her flat, her things in storage. The only people she really sees at first are doctors, scores and scores of them, with pictures and forms and questions, so many questions, about how she feels, where she has been. As though these are the things she really wants to talk about. As though the words are even capable of crawling up her throat.

She does her best. She's sure she failed most, if not all, of her psych evaluations, but it doesn't faze her. She is still unaccustomed to the sensation of existence. To grass, even. The first evening, when she gets back to the lodge after testing, she takes off her shoes and walks for miles around the surrounding wilderness. The grass and the leaves on the trees are every shade of green, cold and damp against her skin. Of all the things that might have made her cry, she breaks down in the dirt and cries for the grass she almost never got to see again.

How could she have ever thought that Mossad was home? Eli sent her to her death, and Tony came to find her. She was not allowed to die quiet and alone and in evil hands. He betrayed her, but then he saved her, and he brought her home.

Loyalty had never been complicated for him. She was one of them, always, even when he asked the questions he was forced to ask. He knew that going to Somalia meant almost surefire death, and yet he came, for her, even when he thought her dead. It fills her with shame, knowing that he would do this for her after their long, painful history. Knowing that yes, he loves her, and yes, she loves him, and now they are both alive and together.

Ziva wants, more than anything, to finally become an official agent of NCIS – no longer a floater, with allegiances on two sides. Despite what she suspects is a poor showing on her psych evaluations, the board clears her (thank goodness for Director Vance's veto power).

When she comes for Gibbs's blessing, he asks her, "Is this really what you want?"

"I had forgotten who I could trust," she tells him honestly. "We were a team. And I would like that again."

He gives a long hard look. But he signs the form. He kisses her forehead and says, "Welcome back, Ziver."

* * *

She moves into her new apartment two and a half weeks after the rescue. She goes back to work a few days later, just over three weeks after they brought her back. It is at the office, moving back into her old desk, that she sees Tony again properly – the two of them in work clothes, the material things that index normality.

His eyes meet hers and they simply stare, taking in the other's solid warmth and humanity before them. Because it never stopped feeling miraculous, knowing that they were both alive, that they didn't have to die in Somalia. They stare at each other without a word, until McGee walks in from the elevator, and hugs Ziva hello.

The hug jolts her back to his presence, the box on her desk, the paperwork she still isn't finished filling out to reinstate her. She tears away her gaze from Tony, and busies herself with the piles of documents on her desk.

Being alive is hard work.

* * *

He doesn't want to push her, when they return. Even after three weeks, they are overwhelmed, with so much, too much, to work through. There is a lot to feel, a lot to say. He doesn't even know where to begin. Their relationship began in loss, but they don't know how to deal with this kind of unspeakable tragedy. There is everything and nothing to say. They are in limbo, for now, and he waits until she is ready.

She comes to his place at two AM the day after she came back to work – a Friday night.

She knocks on the door, and he opens it after the second knock. She is in sweatpants and an old, tatty blue t-shirt, her hair unstraightened, left in a massive curly bun on top of her head. He is in red shorts and a gray OSU t-shirt, his hair spiked in every direction, a faint imprint of his comforter on his cheek. He yawns, but his eyes are awake. He steps aside to let her in.

"I'm sorry," she says automatically, as he shows her to his couch. "I know that it is late."

"I wasn't sleeping."

"Me either," she admits.

"Coffee?"

She nods, and he gets up to make a pot. She waits on the couch for a couple of endless minutes, but she is too restless to sit, and the coffee will take more time anyway. She gets up too, and joins him in the kitchen. He leans against the counter, waiting on the coffee maker. She lifts herself up and sits on the counter so that the coffee maker is between them.

She is thinner after the desert. Four summers ago, when she wore these sweatpants, they fit comfortably on the widest part of her hips. Now, they are practically falling off of her. Her hair is thinner too; less wildly curly, more docile. She chews on a hangnail and avoids his eye. He yawns again, and watches the coffee-maker work its magic in silence.

At last, she says, "I don't even know where to start."

"Okay," he says, "so, I'll start. How are you, Ziva?"

The simplest question, and she cannot come up with an answer that feels right. "I…don't know."

"That's okay," he says gently.

"Look, I…I know we should talk. About…things."

He sighs, runs a hand through his hair. He waits a beat, then looks her in the eye and says the words he has practiced in his head all summer: "Ziva, I'm sorry. For everything."

"I am as well," she says tremulously. "I…know you meant well."

"A man died."

Tears – bizarre, long restrained – well up. "I know."

"You've been to hell and back."

"Thanks to you."

"Yeah, well…least I could do." He tries to grin at her, like this is a joke, but it isn't funny and he just looks sad.

"You thought I was dead."

"Yeah. We all did. Me, McGee. Abs. Gibbs. Well, maybe not Gibbs. You know how he is with his Spidey senses."

"You still came."

"Had to."

"No. You didn't."

"We don't leave each other behind, Ziva."

"You should have." She says it so quietly, so matter-of-factly, that she almost breaks his heart.

"Hey. No. It doesn't work like that."

"This is a mess," she says, wiping her eyes. "We are a mess."

"I know."

"How do we go on from here?"

Because that's the question on both of their minds, when they get down to it – what to do next. Where to go. How to forgive and move on, when neither seems to be an option.

He mulls that one over for so long that the coffee maker is finished before either of them say a word. He pours out the coffee into two mugs. He gives her one and locates the powdered milk and sugar in the cupboard at his knees.

They take their fill and sip their coffee, the air thick and tentative between them.

Then—

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

She just blinks at him.

"Do you?"

She purses her lips. "Yes," she whispers.

"And I trust you too," he tells her. "That's how we go on from here."

"After all…_that_?" She winces, and he winces too.

"Yeah. Give it time."

She takes a long sip of her coffee, savoring the way it burns her throat on the way down. And when she looks up, he is still there, not having taken a single sip. Just watching her, eyes smoldering, overflowing, the same lovely hazel that haunted her dreams every night in the desert.

He reaches his hand out, and finds hers on the counter, and squeezes it lightly. His hand is still hot from handling the coffeemaker. She slips off the counter and lands on her feet, her hand still in his. They take their coffee in their free hands, and he leads her back to the sofa, where he sits facing her. He can see every detail of her face – the delicate slope of her nose, the dizzying array of browns in her irises, the curve of her eyelashes, the lines and shadows beneath her eyes, hinting at her exhaustion. Even in her unkempt state, she is beautiful.

So he asks her, "Do you want some music?"

She is about to decline, just sit here on his couch drinking her coffee and drinking him in – but then she says, "Yes, I would."

She leaves her mug on the table and goes to sift through his record collection. She doesn't know many of the artists, but she likes the cover of a Tom Waits album – a man on a street corner, smoking a pipe, a woman in a party dress facing away from the neon lights to look at him. "The Heart of Saturday Night." Somehow, it seems fitting. She gives him the record, and he lets the needle land at random.

It's a little scratchy from use, but the piano introduction unfolds, and she grins, sways to the sultry jazziness like it's a joke, like this is normal for them. But his smile is real and warm and loving, as he takes it a step further, grabs hold of her hand and her waist, and twirls her to the center of his living room as the song really starts up.

She throws her head back and laughs – just laughs, because this is crazy, being alive, dancing with him in his apartment like it's home, letting him hold her and breathe her in as though she is wearing something pretty instead of her worn-out blue shirt. She buries her face into his shoulder as he circles around the room with her, his fingers intertwined with hers, humming the melody into her hair.

_And I'm blinded by the neon  
Don't try and change my tune  
'Cause I thought I heard a saxophone  
I'm drunk on the moon_

Of all the things they have been through together, of all the days and nights they spent at each other's mercy, they have never danced. This is their first time – and even though it's late and they are scruffy and it doesn't seem appropriate, given the reason why she came, it still feels right. Bittersweetly fitting.

"I should have come sooner," she tells him eventually, as he slows them down, lets them sway on the spot together. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I know how you are."

She looks up at him, curious. She, too, knows how she is, but she needs him to tell her. "How am I?"

He considers the best way to phrase this. "Well, if I come forward, you'd run away. But if I stay still – then maybe you might come and say something."

Her smile is tired, but genuine.

"Thank you," she says, and he understands that this is a full, wide-ranging thank you. Tenderly, she runs her hand down his cheek, and anchors her palm at his jaw. Goosebumps emerge up and down his arms, and his muscles go taut, and yet she feels him relax. She kisses his cheek, light as rose petals.

Somewhere in the expanse of that unearthly second, the song ends, and the room, the whole world, is silent before the needle finds the next song. He rests his forehead against hers, and they just listen to each other breathe.

It is the beginning of healing.

* * *

They dance a while, to a couple more songs off the record, before collapsing back on the couch, turning to their now cooled coffees. She sips at hers, but then she puts it down and asks him, seriously, how his summer went. He makes her laugh by chronicling the fate of her attempted replacement, and then she listens solemnly to how they managed to track her down in Somalia. He tells her about how McGee was on board the second he suggested the idea, and how Abby had started before either of them had thought up a plan of action. How Vance wink-nudged them into the region when he wasn't officially allowed to.

All these things she missed, all the shades and layers of their concern and their subsequent rescue mission. Sometimes, it is painful, but she also recognizes that she needed to hear it. It loosens something in her, something she can't explain. Like she was never really gone, because she lingered in the background, the back of the team's heads all the time. Like they needed her – like fetching her was not a wasted trip.

From there, Tony branches off, telling her about cases, about the time he replaced McGee's supplemental vitamins with identical-looking sour gumballs, and laughed hysterically as McGee's face puckered. He talks and talks, as he always seems to do with her – but as he talks, she drifts off to sleep, right there on his couch, her cheek balanced against her knuckles on the top of the couch.

He doesn't take it personally – it's getting close to four in the morning, and she looks like she hasn't slept well in weeks. Instead, he gets up off the couch, and gently rearranges her body across the length of the cushions. She doesn't even seem to notice – just moans slightly, when he props her head up on pillows. He considers moving her to his bed, but she looks pretty settled on the couch, and he doesn't want to wake her. So he finds a spare blanket in the linen closet, and tucks her in.

It's the weekend, so she doesn't have to get up for work. She can sleep in and he can make her breakfast, if she wants. He kisses her forehead and retreats to his bedroom to let her sleep.

* * *

The reason she can't sleep is because of the nightmares. Endless streams of them, every night, no matter what the therapist tells her to try, no matter what she self-medicates with.

But on Tony's couch, in Tony's blanket, the scent of him a warm cocoon around her – she sleeps the whole night without interruption for the first time since she came home.

* * *

She wakes up on Saturday morning on Tony's couch to the scent of burning pancakes.

Evidently, Tony tried to make breakfast – for what she would bet is the first time in this kitchen – and he's trying not to yelp too loudly as he scrapes at the scorched, gooey pancake stuck to the pan. By the time he overturns it, it's inedible, so he throws it out and tries again.

Ziva stretches out her arms and pads sleepily into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. "Good morning," she says, smiling at him.

"Oh, hey, you're up," he says. "Sorry. Breakfast will be…um, a while."

"It's okay. I can go get coffee. And bagels, if you want."

"No, I'll do it. This isn't going anywhere anyway." He turns off the stove, and hesitates over the blackened pan. "I'll take care of that later."

He grabs his keys and his wallet, and rushes out of the apartment.

While he's gone, she cleans up the mess from the attempted pancakes for him. He forgot to oil the pan before he started, and he had the heat too high – but the thought was very sweet. She scrapes off as much of the burned pancake as she can, then puts the pan away. The apartment is small but sunny, and she realizes that she has only ever been inside his apartment the time he got drunk after the Le Grenouille mission. And that was just to drop him off in his bed and sneak out the door.

Intrigued, she takes a quick self-guided tour through his apartment. His living room, where they danced last night – a cozy, sparsely furnished place, with a couple of framed film posters and the state of the art television. His kitchen, where he made her coffee and tried to make her pancakes – there isn't much in here, and she's sure he rarely, if ever, ventures in here for more than coffee or beer.

She makes her way down the hall and peers into his bathroom – as messy as she expects it to be, his towel tossed into his sink, his shaving accessories scattered around the little shelf below his mirror, the toilet seat up (of course). And then his bedroom, which she has only entered once in the dark.

Surprisingly, his bedroom is the sparsest room in the place. Or perhaps that shouldn't surprise her. He probably only comes in here to sleep, and because of their jobs, he doesn't even much of that. But it still makes her a little sad, seeing his bed – a queen, not a king – and the simple comforter, the little table with the bedside lamp, no overflowing bookshelf or pictures on the wall. He has a couple of cardboard boxes stacked in the corner, but she doesn't dare look inside.

So this is his world, the place where he goes when he's gone. She flops back on his couch to wait for him, and she is astonished by how comfortably she can do that. His apartment is small and clearly a little bit neglected – how could it not be, with the hours Gibbs keeps? – but it's his home, and it's comfortable, and she is content here.

He returns shortly after her tour, with coffee and cinnamon bread. She curls up on the couch and eats, suddenly finding that she is ravenous. He settles in across from her, as he did last night, and the two of them share breakfast, saying nothing yet everything.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I did my best to minimize case plot holes, and to be as accurate as I could with Jewish funeral traditions. I changed around the case details as my story seemed to need them, and I did my best with a couple of Google searches on Jewish funerals. If something doesn't check out on either end, I'm really sorry.

* * *

After their Friday night together, things finally start going back to normal at work. It's actually astounding how much so – the steady rhythm of cases, interviews, long and busy hours neutralizes a lot. She feels better when working with the team than she does alone at home.

But after the brief reprieve on Tony's couch, the nightmares return in full force. Her sleep is fitful, if it comes at all. She tries to stay as active as she can during the day, hoping that hard work will give her a dreamless sleep, but that rarely works. If her demons are repressed by day, it seems, they come out to play when the sun goes down.

She does her best to fit back into the land of the living. Time passes, and the scars begin to fade. She is back at work, back where she feels alive and useful and, yes, happy. She goes about her daily routine, and she doesn't have any panic attacks. For all intents and purposes, she is fine. Normal.

Yet the nightmares keep coming, and she can feel her mood and her muscles complaining from the lack of sleep, and it's all she can do to hang on sometimes. Because at the time, she tuned it out, but time and air conditioning have brought back the things she forgot – and instead of dying with the knowledge of what happened before and what they did there, she now has to live with it. And living has always been so much more difficult.

* * *

Paris is supposed to be quick and simple. Fly in, pick up Nora Williams for the embezzlement trial, and fly out. Like ripping off a band-aid. It's an afternoon and a night and she is to have her own room. Easy.

But she doesn't travel as well as she used to, when she and Tony get on the plane. The way there is wrenching. She keeps her cool, because that is what she must do, but even a day and a night away from D.C. unglues her slightly. It is home, and she is still adjusting, and being away leaves her a little bit panicked. The last time she was in the air, it was in the jet plane to bring her home. It reminds her of that day, and the tumultuous swirling tempest inside of her then, and she can feel herself shaking at the thought.

Since her travel partner is Tony, though, he keeps her distracted and entertained. It's like traveling with an overexcited toddler who, unfortunately, makes his own money and can waste it however he chooses. He spends entirely too much time selecting gum and magazines for the eight-hour flight, despite Ziva's reminders that there will be movies for him to watch and he won't even look at the magazines anyway. He disagrees, and buys three.

He then insists upon a Big Mac because he woke up at six in the morning and now it's two in the afternoon and he hasn't eaten a thing. So they end up stinking of salt and French fries when they get on the plane, as he cheerfully eats his food and slurps his Coke. He offers her some, but she is queasy, so she tells him no, and lets him think it's because she disapproves of his fast food.

The flight goes fine – Tony ends up falling asleep on her shoulder as they take off, and he only wakes when they land – and they make their way to the hotel. It's three in the morning, and despite his nap, Tony is as exhausted as she is. He complains incessantly about his neck pain as they set off. But Ziva, who did not sleep at all, tells him to shut up and double-check the address on the GPS. He then proceeds to complain about her driving – "I would have driven myself if I could see straight" – because it's still full of the same hair-pin turns and screeching stops that terrified him in D.C. Admittedly, this treacherous style of driving is more at home here in Paris – "does everyone here have a death wish?" – but Tony is pale and a bit green by the time they finally reach.

And then there's the mix up with the hotel rooms – apparently, NCIS only ordered one, and the hotel is at full capacity tonight. When Ziva complains, and subtly threatens the receptionist's life, she brings out the manager, who tells her in French that there is a couch in their room and one of them can sleep there. Problem solved.

But not entirely.

They get to the room, and Ziva is struck by how small it is - nearly claustrophobic. There is no space for privacy, for any kind of secrets. If she has a nightmare tonight, he will probably know about it. Her stomach goes queasy at the very thought.

So she pushes the couch as far away from the bed as possible; she rams it against the opposite wall. Tony goes to the bathroom to change into nightclothes. She reasons that if she makes him take the couch, he will complain about his neck and his back and undoubtedly all of his limbs through the flight the next day, and she's not likely to be in the mood. So she tells him, "You can have the bed if you want it."

From the bathroom, he calls out, "Thanks. Will you be okay on the couch?"

"Yes, I will be fine."

She hears the toilet flush, and the faucet turn on and off. Tony comes out of the bathroom in shorts and a green t-shirt. Ziva takes her bag into the bathroom and changes too – sweatpants and a tank top, the usual. When she comes back into the room, Tony has settled into bed already, and he left her a pillow and a blanket on the couch. He has the stack of magazines he bought at the airport sitting on his bedside table, and he's flipping through _Time_.

Ziva pulls out the novel she brought from her carry-on bag, and is in the process of making up her bed on the couch, when Tony says, "Hey, Ziva? That couch…it doesn't look especially comfortable."

"It will do."

He hesitates, but then he asks her, "Are you sure? Because I can take the couch if you want."

"I'll be hearing all about your back tomorrow if you take the couch," she points out.

"Then we can…you know, we can share the bed. Together. If that's okay."

He blushes even saying the words, and Ziva whirls around to look at him, eyes wide, her expression caught. His blush brings out her own. She bites her lip, and sets down the blanket and the novel.

"You want to share the bed?"

"Not like _that_," he assures her hastily. "You don't have to worry, I won't…you know. But…it's a big bed, and why be uncomfortable?"

Every inch of her body is on high alert, considering this. Because of course, the bed is preferable to the couch – he isn't the only one with a back that will complain – but then, it's Tony, and they have shared a bed before in other contexts, contexts she remembers in searing, awkward detail. She doesn't know if she can handle being so close to him for an entire night. She knows how he is. He will snore and roll towards her, and they will be curled up in each other, listening to the other breathe, feeling their warmth. And sleep is such a dangerous thing for her in and of itself. It's a risk, letting him come so close.

But he is in the bed, innocently watching her decide, and there is that empty space beside him, the still-neat half with the comforter tucked in, waiting for her. Maybe having him beside her will keep her safe tonight, like last time. And she brought some of her leftover pills with her, to put her to sleep and hopefully ward off dangerous dreams.

Her resolve melts. She does want the bed. So she picks up her book and slips into the bed, turns on the lamp and opens to the first page.

"I won't tell the others," he promises in a whisper as he turns over to go to sleep.

* * *

But the desert comes alive again inside her head, sucks her into a vortex of sand and brittle wind and a stubbornly cloudless white-blue sky. There is sand everywhere, everywhere – in every direction her eye can see, inside her shoes, her clothes, her hair, her throat, choking her as an iron fist meets her jaw, knocks the wind out of her. She can literally feel the bruise blooming on her cheek. There is blood in her mouth – thin, metallic. She spits it out to the sandy ground, and his laugh echoes in her ear.

The world takes on a surreal glow, like someone turned up the brightness. A few wispy clouds gather over her head, and she thinks it's finally going to rain, but instead it rains glass. It stabs the earth in a barrage of reflective shine, almost blinding her. And then she sees Rivkin's dead face, the glass in his gut that reflects back fragments of her own sweaty, screaming, bloodied face—and there's his laugh again, taunting her—

"YOU KILLED HIM!" She screams it at Saleem, at her father, at herself – at Tony, whose face suddenly looms in front of hers, his hazel eyes urgent, his mouth moving, saying something, but it's like the sound is muted, because there is that wind, blowing sand in her eyes and her ears and the roof of her mouth—

She's thrashing against her restraints, fighting to reach Rivkin, who is floating away, dead and unreachable no matter how she screams. But then her screams start fading too, because there is not enough moisture inside her throat, and there are hands pulling her back, back into the dark, where no one will ever be able to reach her. And there's Tony face, coming back again, breaking through that cloudless sky, mouthing something—

It's her name. _"Ziva_." Over and over and over again. But no, no, she can't let him in, or she'll lose him again—

_Wham!_

She gives him an almighty push, and ends up punching him in the nose.

It is the feel of his flesh against her knuckles that brings her fully back to Earth.

"Ziva." He says her name again, muffled as he tries to stem the flow of blood from his nostrils. "Ziva, it's okay. You're all right."

She is still panting, covered in sweat, her eyes terrified. She sees the blood in his nose and lets her hands fall limp at her side, horrified at what she's done.

The pills didn't work. He couldn't keep her safe tonight. And look at the way she has punished him for getting close. She didn't even know she fought that hard in her sleep; otherwise, she would never have agreed to share the bed.

Once he is sure that she is back in the land of the living, he gets up off the bed and fetches a glass of water and a fistful of napkins. He brings her the water, and presses the napkins against his nose. The napkins are quickly soaked red with his blood.

Her hand shakes as she accepts the water, takes a sip. She spills a little on her chest. But it's cold and bracing, a miracle against her scratchy throat. She finishes most of it in one gulp, and he quietly goes to refill it without being asked. It takes two more refills before she stops shaking, before her breathing goes back to normal, and she remembers where she is.

Paris. The hotel room. The bed she was foolhardy enough to share with him. From the pain in her wrists, she figures that during the nightmare, she was screaming and flailing and woke him up, and he tried to restrain her, tried to call out her name and bring her back again, but he couldn't hold her down. She punched him in the face. She hopes that she didn't end up breaking his nose - though, he tests it out, and it doesn't seem like she did. But it was a close call.

After a few minutes, he throws the blood napkins away in the bathroom trashcan. There is still a little dried blood caked around his nose, but he isn't think about that. He's looking at her. Waiting for her to talk.

Normally, this is his job. He talks and she listens. But the clock on the wall says it's 5:58 in the morning, and his jaw is set and determined, and he looks at her with such scorching intensity that she feels compelled to speak. She clears her throat, searches for her voice.

"I'm sorry."

"You scared me," he tells her, and she believes it.

"I know. I…did not realize it was still this bad."

"Still?"

She nods. He exhales sharply, runs a hand through his hair and studies her features.

"When is the last time you actually got a full night of sleep?"

Her eyes are shiny in the dark. "I don't know."

"Who knows about this?"

"No one."

"Are you seeing a doctor?"

"Tony, I am not taking pills from a stranger just because I cannot sleep."

He raises an eyebrow. "Not being able to sleep sounds like a pretty good reason to take a pill from a _board-certified doctor_."

"They give me pills, when…I came back. I did not like them. They made me fuzzy. I could not do my job. So I stopped taking them. I brought some with me and took them before I fell asleep. Apparently, they did not help."

"Maybe it's time to try them again full time." He puts his hand on hers, squeezes tight.

Her throat feels thick, swollen. Leaden exhaustion sets in again. But she says, "All right."

"Come here." He lies back against his pillow once more, and offers her his hand. She hesitates, but she takes it, and he gently pulls her down beside him. He holds her close to him, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist, and he whispers into her temple, "It's okay now. Sleep. I'll wake you when it's time to go."

She nods sleepily, and lets her eyes flutter shut. She is so tired – physically, emotionally. And he smells so good, and his shoulder is warm and firm and such a lovely place to lay her head. She doesn't want to think about the mechanics of this – whether it's appropriate, whether she's going to have to explain herself.

So many nights, she let him need her. Today, she lets herself need him.

By his side, she is asleep within minutes.

* * *

He can feel her breath against his t-shirt, the up-and-down motion of her chest against his side. She sleeps peacefully now; she doesn't even snore. He pulls the blanket on top of them both, and she doesn't even stir.

It's raining in Paris this morning. It's only a light rain – it'll be over in a couple of hours, he's sure – but it's enough to delay flights. Tony gets an email on his phone saying that the flight he, Ziva and Nora are meant to get on leaves at six in the evening, rather than four. They were supposed to meet Nora at her apartment at noon, but Tony sends her a text, asking if they can come at one instead. It'll give Ziva a little more time to sleep – and maybe they can grab lunch, see the Eiffel Tower, before they have to leave. He wishes they were here a little longer to see the sights, but he supposes that it'll have to wait.

Though Ziva sleeps well at long last, Tony is unable to do the same. The clock says seven, eight, nine – the rain worsens, then trickles away, leaving the morning cloudy with the promise of sun – and he stares at the ceiling, idly plays with a strand of Ziva's hair, his mind in a million places at once.

Lines are getting even blurrier now, if they were ever distinct to begin with. They are in the same bed, and he is holding her, standing guard over her while she sleeps. They have traveled light-years since their first meeting – the girl in the bandana who asked for Agent Gibbs, the girl who shared a pizza with him and told him about her sister – and everything has become so confused.

They are in several places of a relationship at the same time. They spent a whole summer holed up in her apartment, talking about their lives, and yet he is uncomfortable asking her out for a casual drink. He has seen her naked, but he doesn't know who her friends were before she came to NCIS. He went to hell and back to save her life, and he knows how he takes her coffee, and yet they have never really gotten to be friends.

He knows, vaguely, that her life is littered with loss and tragedy. But she has never let him in. She still won't let him in. So much remains unspoken and strange and complicated between them. What he knows about her, he has pried out of her by force or by circumstance. And now, he is holding her, and though he knows that she matters to him – though he knows that he loves her, in some way – he can never say it to her, nor can he really say it to himself.

He is haunted by her. He is helpless. He didn't even know she couldn't sleep until an accident with the hotel computers put them in the same room tonight. The layers of context, keep building and building, and he finds he wants to be there for her in a way he's never wanted to be there for anyone before.

He sees her sleeping at last in his arms, and he wants nothing more than to soak up her pain like a sponge and make her whole again. After all she has been through, it seems fair that now, someone is here to take care of her for a change.

* * *

He lets her sleep until eleven, at which point he is forced to gently shake her awake. She comes to at once, surprised that she is still balanced in the crook of his arm, surprised that the sun is out now, bright and shining through the window.

"Flight's delayed," he tells her. "We're taking off at six. Nora is going to meet us at one."

"What time is it?" She sits up, stretches out her arms – though carefully avoiding his face.

"Eleven. If we hurry up with checking out, we can grab a croissant before we fetch her."

She rubs her eyes and smiles at him. Already, she looks a little stronger, a little healthier. "Okay," she says.

* * *

NCIS had reserved a car for them in Paris, but when they are leaving the hotel at 11:30 after checking out, Tony is fascinated by someone driving by on a moped, and he runs back into the hotel to ask the concierge where to rent one. The concierge says that there is a rental place two streets down.

"We really should use the car, Tony," says Ziva, as the two of them walk down the sunny sidewalk towards the shop.

"We will! But mopeds are the best way to see the city on the fly," Tony insists. "Come on. You won't regret it."

And indeed, she doesn't.

They take a ride through the streets of Paris, squeezing through traffic and pointing out the sights as they pass. Since Ziva is the passenger, she is tasked with taking pictures. Most of them come out a little blurry, but that doesn't matter. The sights and the smells and the noise of the city roar in their ears. When she's tired of photographer duty, she tucks the camera into her coat pocket, and rests her chin on his shoulder, her arms tight around his waist. He pops a wheelie in the middle of a busy road just to make her scream. But then they're both laughing, scaring the birds as they rush past.

They stop at a little café at 12:30, for a croissant and a quick cup of coffee. He casually pays for her before she can pull out her wallet – and when she thanks him, he just waves a hand at her, and picks a table out in the sun. The wind kicks up her curls, and he snaps a picture with the camera just to get a rise out of her – she's holding her coffee and staring out at the street, at all the passing cars and chatty pedestrians.

She snatches the camera out of his hands to see what hideous photograph he had taken of her – but actually, it's not a bad shot. She has a beautiful profile. So she doesn't delete the picture, and takes one of him to annoy him.

This one is less glamorous – he saw what she was doing and his mouth was open, saying her name, his hand reaching for the camera in a blur – but it makes her smile. And she knows that out of all the photos they took today, this is the one she's going to keep.

* * *

It's taken them years of jealousy, conflict, separation, neediness and sexual curiosity, but after Paris, Tony believes that he and Ziva have finally become friends.

The victory was hard-fought, hard-won. The events of the last five years have taken their toll – both have been tested and hurt in unimaginable ways – but they are here now, and they are all right, and they have moved on.

Their history is pretty fucked up, if he's honest with himself, but now he thinks that they are in this place where he knows that if he needs her, for anything, she is here for him. And if she needs him, she knows that he is there for her. And that is more than he could have ever hoped for, in the past.

Sex is finally out of the equation, the way Ziva wanted when she first joined NCIS. Both have sobered up, grown up. There are lines never to cross – in love, in concern – and they navigate the labyrinth of restrictions with improved dexterity, borne of trial-and-error. Whether or not they have ever wanted more than friendship from one another in the past, for this moment, friendship is right. Friendship is enough.

She doesn't come over again, and neither does he. They stick to what they know – working cases, bantering like they do – and that familiar groove is so welcome. They keep a respectful distance, and do their jobs, and it's okay. Everything is okay.

And "okay", they know now, is a blessing. They can work with "okay."

* * *

When on a short assignment in Miami, a few months after Paris, Ziva meets Ray Cruz. Their fling is brief and not serious – cold drinks on a hot beach, sex in hotel rooms smelling like hibiscus, the drafty ocean air blowing in through the open window. And when he gives her the hint of seriousness, she backs off, because that's not what she wants.

Ray is an ideal lover. He's CIA, so he understands about work, and he has no prior history with her. He doesn't know where she's been, what she's done, what she's seen. So he flirts with her like she is anybody else, like she is just a pretty girl he met by the pool in the Florida sun. It's this lack of commitment that she likes most about him – sex that can feel good but doesn't promise intimacy.

They have a good time, and then she goes home. She won't let him call her, but she'll send him light, chatty messages that make them both smile.

She is learning, slowly, how to be with other people again.

* * *

And then there is Erica Jane Barrett, who waltzes into NCIS headquarters one day, a couple of months after Ziva went to Miami. She is blonde and sharp and sassy – exactly Tony's type. She settles in with her team across the partition in the bullpen, and he glances at her more often than he'd care to admit, throughout the course of her first day, and the days after.

She corners him in the evening after work, about a week after she comes to Washington, and she asks him if he wants to go for a drink with her. And he almost says no, but then he says yes – because she has mischievous, sparkling blue eyes, and she is a shameless flirt, and he frankly likes being wanted. He's dated around a bit since Jeanne, but nothing serious has panned out, and EJ seems promising. Maybe not for the long-term, but she seems like a riotous short-term.

"Oh, good," she says, genuinely pleased. "Let's go."

So he lets her take the lead, and bring him to a bar she likes on the other end of town, near her apartment. He pays for the first round of drinks, but she pays for the second, and they play pool against a couple of doctors taking a night off, and EJ wins by a long shot. She whoops and does her victory dance – and on their way out, she kisses him, hot and heavy, in the parking lot, and it takes all his self-control to leave and go home alone.

Because the truth is, his love life has been quiet of late, and he's not getting any younger, and he does want someone around, someone smart and funny, someone who can appreciate a good film, someone who kisses well and lets him have a good time, low-pressure. EJ is that kind of person – and she isn't on their team, so she isn't a coworker, and Rule Twelve doesn't apply.

He feels like he is returning to himself, hanging out with EJ. He's smiling again, bouncing into work whistling some song on the radio. She comes over all the time, and he relaxes into her. She, too, is a Bond aficionado, and they watch some of those films together, keeping up a running commentary of trivia – nothing hard, nothing fancy.

They get on well. She makes him laugh. And after years of failed relationships, he finds EJ Barrett to be a refreshing reprieve.

* * *

Ziva notices almost immediately, of course, that Tony is seeing Agent Barrett. He is more obvious than he thinks he is, and anyway, she knew him when he lusted after Jeanne. She knows how he is. He smiles at EJ across the partition, and they take their coffee breaks almost simultaneously, and he defends her when McGee or Gibbs glances at her in distrust. He's into her.

And in theory, that's fine – she doesn't begrudge him his right to date whomever he pleases. Yet, there is something about EJ Barrett that rubs Ziva entirely the wrong way. Something about her cocky confidence, the blonde hair she only seldom ties into a ponytail despite the fact that she is in the field all the time. Something about her wide, almost hungry smile, whenever she sees Tony. As though he is a prize that she has won, and she can't wait to play with him.

She worries for Tony. All is not well with EJ Barrett; she just has this feeling. And Ziva's instincts are usually pretty accurate.

* * *

The Port-to-Port killer strikes again, then – the body of a seaman is found wrapped in plastic. And the team finds out the truth about Agent Barrett's reassignment to Washington – she is here to find this serial killer.

Vance appoints Gibbs's team to work with EJ's team, with EJ taking lead. It was her case first, after all. But Gibbs isn't happy about it, and Tony can tell that Ziva and McGee aren't especially enthusiastic either. None of them trust her – none of them think she can do her job – and that night, when she brings him over for pizza and beer, she complains about it.

"I'm a capable agent," she insists. "And I've been on this guy for months. We're getting close. I know these files backward and forward. All I would be doing is helping, and your Agent Gibbs looks like he wouldn't even trust me to give in his dry cleaning."

Tony smirks. "Well, that's Gibbs. You have to earn his trust."

"I'm trying," she says. "But if he doesn't want to give it to me, then fine. I'm not afraid of him. I have lead, and I'm going to run this investigation whether he wants me to or not."

He chuckles, but doesn't say anything. EJ pounces.

"What, you don't think I could take him?"

"Let's just put it this way," says Tony. "We have had three different directors here at NCIS in the time I've worked here. But Gibbs? He's always here to stay."

"Thank you for your support." EJ rolls her eyes and starts on her crust.

* * *

Indeed, Gibbs is deeply unwilling to hand over the reins to EJ Barrett. He doesn't trust her. And in a way, Tony expects that. But McGee and Ziva aren't crazy about her either, and he understands this less – because EJ is indeed a perfectly capable agent, and also a good person, and it doesn't make sense that neither Ziva nor McGee is willing to give her a shot.

He is leaving the office to interview the family of the victim again with Ziva, when they pass EJ's office space. EJ spots him going, and cheerfully waves goodbye. Tony nods at her, grinning, and EJ puts up her pinkie finger and her thumb, making the sign for phone, shaking her hand by her ear and mouthing, "call me later." Tony winks as Ziva presses the button for the elevator and it comes.

Ziva sighs audibly as the two of them step inside and ride downstairs to the parking lot.

Tony side-eyes her irritably and asks, "What's your deal with her anyway?"

"My deal with whom?" She blinks innocently at him, but he just cocks an eyebrow.

"EJ," he says. "You don't like her."

Ziva clears her throat. "No. I do not." She is flippant, but guarded – defensive.

"I can't see why. She hasn't done anything wrong."

"It's just…a difference of temperament, I suppose."

"Gibbs doesn't like her either."

"Shouldn't that tell you something?"

The elevator reaches the ground floor. Ziva gets out first.

"Gibbs isn't always right, you know," Tony points out, catching up to her.

"No. But in this case, I agree with him."

They approach the sedan. Ziva has the keys; she unlocks the car and makes for the driver's seat, but Tony steps in front of her, blocks the handle.

"Why? Seriously." It's almost like a challenge.

Ziva sighs again. "Tony, I just think that she is bad news. I will follow her lead on this case, but I do not have to like her personally. Not the way you do."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You know what it means." Her tone is cool and even, like frosting on a cake. "You are sleeping with her, are you not?"

He sputters a little in indignation, his cheeks flushed. "That is none of your business."

"Since she is team leader on a case that we are all working on together, I would say, yes, it is my business."

He narrows his eyes at her. "Just trust me on this one. Okay? I know what I'm doing."

She stares him down a good long time before she says, "I hope you do. Now if you will excuse me—"

She nudges him into the sedan next to theirs, and slips into the driver's seat, starts the car. He gets into the passenger seat, and makes it five miles before he asks her if he can do the driving, please.

* * *

She is thinking of Michael Rivkin; he knows that she is. But it's not like that with EJ.

If there were cause for concern, professionally, he would tell Ziva. But there isn't. This thing with EJ, it's innocent. It's…nice. He gets lonely sometimes, and she is there, and she is easy, and she is what he wants right now. They have fun together. They drink beer and watch soccer. She wears his flannel shirts in the mornings, and knows how to make a wicked eggs benedict.

It's not like Michael Rivkin. EJ isn't dangerous and there is no reason to think that she is. He wishes she would let it go.

Because what would _really_ make this like Michael Rivkin is if Ziva got jealous. If EJ caused both Tony and Ziva's judgments to get clouded, if they missed something and it wrecked their ability to solve the case. _That_ would be the disaster.

And Ziva isn't jealous of EJ, right? Because much as Tony likes EJ, he knows that she won't last.

And anyway, Tony and Ziva are friends again. And a friend wouldn't get jealous of her friend's girlfriend.

* * *

Kort is the one who finally lets them in on Cobb's game. Operation Frankenstein, the soul-breaking missions, the way Cobb finally cracked and never recovered.

And then Cobb infiltrates the Navy Yard, coming after the people he blames for his breakdown – Vance, Kort, and the SecNav. Vance, returning from a conference abroad, is picked up at the airport, and guarded by two agents. EJ is put into protective custody at once, in case Cobb comes after her in order to get to the SecNav. The building is put on lock-down – no one in or out. With EJ whisked away, Gibbs takes command – all hands are on deck to find this son of a bitch. He's got something planned, and Tony, Ziva and McGee are clustered around McGee's computer, trying to figure him out.

But in the end, Cobb is too smart for them. McGee receives a video file in the midst of his frantic typing, with Cobb sitting on a park bench, explaining, calmly, that sins must be punished – and the Navy has sinned even more than they know. It's about justice. It's about making sure Operation Frankenstein, and all its CIA cousins, don't happen again. Not unless they want another maniacal murderer like him. It's for their own good.

McGee analyzes the video, and realizes that the video was taken at a park just outside the Navy Yard. And, more importantly, McGee realizes that Cobb has planted a bomb – in Vance's car. Which sits inside the NCIS parking lot, primed to explode.

Time is a funny thing, in situations of such high stress, when even milliseconds count. It speeds up, and yet it slows down, every precious minute unrolling like a red carpet to the horizon, as everyone does what they must.

The building is evacuated as quickly as possible. The bomb squad is dispatched to the parking garage to sort out the bomb. McGee sprints downstairs to fetch Ducky, Palmer and Abby, and Tony and Ziva run up and down the stairs, facilitating the movement of bodies out of the vicinity.

But it's not enough. They figured it out too late. As the bomb squad approaches the parking garage, the bomb inside Vance's trunk explodes.

With the bomb at the foundation of the building, it quickly collapses into itself, like a bad soufflé. It's swift and ugly and terrifying, as the ground shifts and overturns, as the walls crumble, as the floors crumble, as the last stragglers are punished for the accident of their lateness, thrown into the air like tiny plastic figurines.

Tony and Ziva are the last ones to get out of the building. They were on the third floor when the bomb went off, and they struggle to get to a staircase, struggle to get as many people as they can out with them.

EJ is on the third floor as well, her hand around the wrist of a terrified intern who looks like she is about to go into shock. EJ is cut up badly – she was near a window, there is still glass wedged into her blonde ponytail – but she sees Tony, and shouts out his name.

"EJ!" he calls back. "Come on, Ziva and I are trying to find an exit!"

"Take her with you," says EJ, pushing the intern towards Ziva, who catches her before she feels into a dead faint. "Get her out. Cade is trapped under a desk in our office, I promised him I'd bring help. I have to go."

"Come with us – we'll send up another agent."

But EJ shakes her head. She has that defiant, almost childishly stubborn look in her eyes that Tony recognizes from their games of pool, blackjack, Monopoly. EJ is competitive, and strong-willed. When she's made up her mind about something, there is nothing on this Earth that Tony can do to convince her otherwise.

"I'll see you, Tony," she says, making to run upstairs to Cade.

"EJ, wait—"

But the building is rumbling again. Is there another bomb? An almighty crash sounds off below them, and the three of them exchange terrified glances.

There _is_ another bomb. A smaller one, but on the ground floor, meant to take out whatever is left of the foundation.

If anything, this settles it for EJ. "I'm not leaving a man behind," she tells Tony. "Don't worry about me. I'm strong. I'll be fine."

She kisses him briefly, her lips smashing against his teeth. But it's not a goodbye kiss; it's a "see you later" kiss. And God does he hope he'll see her later.

She scampers off, her ponytail bouncing behind her as she runs straight into the chaos, trying to find a way up to Cade.

And he just stands there, dumbfounded, blankly watching the spot where she had been standing. Ziva is the one who has to snap him out of it, and say, "Hey, we have to get out of here before the whole place comes down."

Between the two of them, they get the intern out to safety through one of the last fully standing stairwells, moments before the building explodes, and the rest comes down. Ziva makes sure a medic whisks the unconscious intern away, before rejoining Tony, the two of them solemnly watching as the fires erupt, and NCIS succumbs to the physical blow.

* * *

The rest of the team is a little less lucky than Tony or Ziva. They get out with mere scratches. But McGee broke his wrist when Abby's mass spectrometer came crashing upon them, and he shoved Abby to safety and got pinned himself. The fall also did something strange to his ankle; Abby brought him to the ambulance hopping on one foot, clutching Abby's shoulder and her hand for dear life. Abby herself only got a mild concussion from when McGee pushed her, and she wasn't prepared, and she landed, hard, on the floor.

Abby and McGee are the ones who need the doctors. Ducky got out with McGee and Abby, and he checks Abby now, expertly trapping her in the back of an ambulance to check for permanent brain damage from her concussion. But Abby has no patience for that; she tears herself away and flies to McGee's side. McGee turns out to not only have a busted wrist and twisted ankle, but also shards of glass from the bulletproof, not bomb-proof, window inside his gut. He's internally bleeding. He needs to get to a hospital.

Ducky gets in with McGee; he, too, is a doctor, and he intends to keep a hawk's eye on the other doctors. The doctor who was tending to McGee informs Abby, Tony and Ziva that only one more is allowed to ride with them in the ambulance. Abby looks confused, like this isn't even a question. She manages to shout, "I'll text you everything," before the ambulance doors close, and the car drives off.

Ziva looks almost as pale as the intern did. Tony has never seen her so terrified. She's not in control; she is reeling from the shock. He supposes that they all are, but he puts his arm around Ziva and holds her close anyway, murmuring in her ear that it's okay, they got out, it's okay, it's okay.

The whole team is alive. There's something to be said about that.

And when he remembers the word 'team,' he remembers EJ. EJ, who ran inside just as the second bomb went off, in search for Cade. Because she wanted her whole team to get out of there alive too. Tony's whole being floods with this singular purpose in all of the chaos: he has to find out what happened to EJ.

EJ doesn't have a team like Gibbs, Ziva, Abby, Ducky and McGee. There is no one looking for her, no one asking questions on her behalf. He tells Ziva to get to the hospital, and he will meet her there soon. Ziva slips away without a word.

The FBI is here by now, the whole yard alive with doctors and agents. Tony searches for Gibbs, who always seems to know everything and might know about EJ, but he isn't answering his phone. He must have gone to the hospital to check on McGee. Or maybe he's with Fornell, reporting details about the bombing and Cobb's plan, so that they can catch him at once. Fornell is nowhere to be seen either.

Tony sends him a text asking where he is, before remembering that Gibbs never replies to texts; instead, he calls, but Gibbs isn't picking up. As though that's acceptable on a day like today.

Since Gibbs and Fornell are not around to interrogate, Tony asks every medic in his line of sight, if they know what happened to Erica Jane Barrett. Blonde, petite, had glass in her hair. Ran like a crazy person into the building to find her teammate. But the medics are all preoccupied, and they don't know what happened to EJ. Nobody knows what happened to EJ.

It's not until about an hour later, when Tony swallows his fear and forces himself to look at the lists of missing agents, that he realizes that EJ Barrett is one of the names crossed out in red. They do that when a missing agent turns up in the morgue.

She didn't make it out alive. And neither did Cade.

* * *

The team spends the night in McGee's hospital room, visiting hours be damned. Tony fetches five coffees and various snacks from the vending machine, however much the change in his wallet can buy, and that's dinner. Abby and Ziva curl up on the couch; Abby chews her nails down to nothing, and Ziva periodically sips at her coffee, saying nothing. Ducky keeps going back and forth between the room and the reception desk, checking in on McGee's test results. Tony paces, because it kills him to stand still. Gibbs stands guard in front of McGee's bed, but leaves at around two in the morning when Fornell calls.

One by one, the team falls asleep – even Ducky, who has been snapping at nurses, trying to hurry along the tests. Abby falls asleep on Ziva's shoulder, and Ziva rests her cheek against the top of Abby's head, dozes off while still holding her coffee. She sleeps deeply, peacefully, like her body has checked out from the stress of the day. Only Tony stays awake the whole night, exhausted but unable to rest, not with the thoughts buzzing in his head like angry bees.

When Ziva wakes, around ten, she carefully stands and props Abby's head up with a pillow. Her coffee is stone cold from the night, but she drinks it anyway, and stands next to Tony, who is still staring gravely at a sleeping McGee. They are quiet a while, watching McGee's chest rise and fall, rise and fall, silently thanking whoever is listening that McGee is alive and mostly whole. He was one of the lucky ones. Only a handful in the basement survived.

"Did you find EJ?" Ziva asks at last.

He nods slowly.

"Is she all right?"

He doesn't meet her eye, but he shakes his head, equally slow, careful. And that's enough for Ziva to figure out what he means. She inhales sharply in surprise, in shock, in sadness, and then exhales. Her hand finds his.

"I am so sorry," she says.

He shrugs like this isn't killing him. "It's fine. Guess I shouldn't have been surprised. The second bomb went off and instead of getting somewhere safe, she went upstairs for Cade. Neither of them survived."

"She was very brave."

"She was." He takes a deep breath. "But I guess it's just a law of the universe, right? Everyone I care about is brave, and everyone I care about eventually dies on me. I suppose I have that effect on people." He makes a brave attempt at a smirk, as though this is a joke, but neither of them finds it even remotely funny.

"Hey." She squeezes his hand tighter. "I'm still here."

Only now does he make eye contact, his hazel eyes shadowy with grief. He looks her up and down, bedraggled and wounded in yesterday's clothes, smelling like the ashes of NCIS. "Barely," he remarks.

He's thinking about the tragedies of last summer, about Michael Rivkin and the Damocles and the Somali camp and the way she was scarcely alive when they took her away. But she's thinking about the miracle of last summer, the way they found her and brought her back against the long odds.

"But I'm here," she reminds them both, and doesn't let go of his hand.

* * *

Later that afternoon, while the team keeps McGee company in the hospital, Gibbs calls Tony and asks him and Ziva to meet at Fornell's office at the FBI headquarters. The two leave immediately, and find Gibbs, Fornell, Vance and the director of the FBI, Erikson, gathered somberly in wait.

Fornell and the FBI have lead on the Cobb case, but of course Gibbs wanted in – and after some negotiating with Fornell and Erikson, Gibbs, Tony, and Ziva will be assisting in Cobb's capture. There is no time to sleep, or stay with McGee, or even think too hard about what happened at NCIS. They have to find Cobb, before he thinks up a sequel to his grand finale.

The investigation takes six days, before they finally corner Cobb in his hidey-hole in the Virginia woods. He had been staying in an abandoned shed, living off the land, while of course giving the FBI the runaround. But a swarm of agents all eager for his blood surround the shed, and Gibbs orders him out with his hands up.

Time's up, game's over. And yet, Cobb still has one more trick up his sleeve.

He comes outside, hands over his head, but his eyes are stony, and he tells them that they killed him a long time ago. And he isn't going to go quietly with the government that once put him through hell.

Behind his head, inside his palm, he holds a trigger. He pushes it before Gibbs or Fornell can threaten him, and the shed blows up – and takes Cobb with it.

The agents are thrown back with the force of the blast, and those in the front – including Gibbs, Fornell, Tony and Ziva – are a little scorched, their ears ringing from the blast.

But they've reached the end now. Cobb is dead, unable to hurt them again. Ziva's face crumples like paper inside a fist, and she buries her face in Tony's shoulder, lets out the muffled scream that she swallowed down since the attack on NCIS. And he just holds her there, pressure building up behind his eyes as well – because they are exhausted, and there hasn't been time to grieve for all they have lost, and Cobb is gone and they have to face the damage he has done. Which is an overwhelmingly gargantuan task in and of itself.

* * *

Tony and Ziva pay another visit to the hospital – to make sure their health checks out, and also to update Abby, McGee and Ducky. It's a moment of collective catharsis, when Gibbs quietly tells them, "It's over."

Because it is. And yet, in a way, it isn't.

* * *

Since neither Tony nor Ziva has slept much this week, he offers to drive her home. She nods, but her face is blank, scrubbed clean of any emotion. She is subdued as he drives out of the hospital, the scary kind of quiet that makes him feel like she is building herself up to explode – so halfway to her place, he changes his mind and takes her to his place instead.

He takes her upstairs to his apartment, and he pours her a glass of wine, and orders in a pizza delivery. She takes a couple sips of the wine, and watches as he makes the call to Pizza Hut, but she is still quiet when he hangs up, and his brow is furrowed with distress.

He has never been entirely sure how to handle her when she gets like this. Whether he should give her space, or leave her be. He brought her here because he knows instinctively that she shouldn't be alone right now, and yet now that she's here, he doesn't know what to say.

But he knows how she is – he knows that she will open up if he just stays still – so he drinks his wine and waits for the pizza in silence, lets her collect her thoughts.

The food comes after about fifteen minutes, and he offers a slice of steaming hot cheese pizza. She accepts it, and she nibbles her way up to the crust – but then she bursts out, "Is nothing _ever_ permanent?"

Startled, he drops his half-eaten slice onto his plate with a greasy _thwack_! "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing is permanent," she answers herself, her eyes wild, fierce. "He came for NCIS. And he got it."

"Ziva…" He reaches out to touch her, but she recoils, as though he contains an electric shock. So he withdraws, and puts aside his slice of pizza.

"Ziva, bricks and mortar can be rebuilt. He got the building, but he didn't get NCIS. We're still here."

"I saw them take out Brendan from Accounting. He was in a body bag, wheeled away to the morgue," she says. "I said hi to him _this morning_ in the elevator. And now he's gone."

Tony sighs heavily. "I know. And EJ…I was with her last night. We played strip bingo." In spite of himself, he snorts, smirks sadly when he remembers how EJ won and made him take off his clothes and kissed him right here on the couch he and Ziva are sitting on.

"Nothing is permanent," she repeats. "Nothing except the inevitability of people leaving, and dying, with you helplessly watching them go."

She's in a strange mood, like something has snapped inside of her, turned off all her filters – like something has broken her. Maybe it's the lighting in his living room, or the lack of makeup and sleep, but the shadows beneath her eyes are more pronounced than usual, and her hair is curly and frizzy and unwashed, and she is twitchy, too thin, almost ghostly. She knocks over her empty glass of wine, and lets it fall to the floor.

She struggles with something for a moment, and then seems to decide that she doesn't care anymore. It scares him, how calm and yet unstable she is, as she says, "I think it is time to tell you the truth about myself."

He blinks at her, terrified and also intrigued. "What does that mean?"

She smiles at him, her first smile this week – but it is hollow, defeated. "It means that there is a lot I have not told you. And then perhaps you will understand."

* * *

She talks late into the night, the first time he has heard her speak so long, so honestly. That was always his job. But tonight, over their forgotten pizza, she tells him – not because she wants to, but because the words are bursting out of her, too big and too much to be squashed into the dark tiny corners of her body.

She tells him about Tali, her better half, her best friend in childhood. Tali, who was young and sweet and loved to salsa dance. Tali, who kissed boys behind the school, and put ribbons in her hair, and laughed when something amused her, even though there was a war going on and life was a drab, ominous, short-lived thing.

Tali, who went out late one night, and managed to get blown up by a Hamas bomb in the city square.

Ziva tells him how that was a dangerous place to go, and Tali knew it, and she went anyway, and her older sister was not there to rein her in, bring her home. And now Tali is long dead, and the world is all the worse for that.

"I never told you, but I had a brother too," she says after a long pause. "And you knew him in his darkest days. Ari Haswari. He was my half-brother."

Tony blanches at that, almost falls off his couch – because he remembers, he remembers, when Ziva was the girl in the purple bandana and Kate had just died and Ziva was the one standing in their way. And it makes sense now, because he was her brother, and of course she was inclined to believe him. Of course she wanted to keep him safe. She had been slipping him resources that night at the pool, that night when they shared their first pizza – because Ari was her family, and Mossad was who she was. They were all she had.

But there is more. She tells him how she was the one who prepared Ari's dossiers about each member of Gibbs's team. How she knew about Shannon and Kelly before the rest of them did. How her orders were to kill Ari in order to gain Gibbs's trust. But when she and Gibbs talked in Abby's lab, and she looked at their evidence, she realized what Ari had done, and how she had been wrong about him, and how when she killed him, it wasn't for Gibbs or for Mossad but for herself – for the brother that went astray and broke her heart.

She has lost her whole family. She lost her mother first, with Eli's long hours and that affair; she left, and was killed in a car accident a few years later. Then Tali. Then Ari. Then Eli, who betrayed his little girl, the only one left, and now he is all but dead to her too.

So she has no one. She has no home. She did what she could – she survived by being a nomad, thinking that if she remained physically unstoppable, unattached to anyone, doing unspeakable things without remorse or second thoughts, just kept running and running – then she would be safe. She would have nothing to lose.

But she was wrong, because that was when she still had family to lose. Like Ari.

So she left that world behind. NCIS was supposed to be her new home, but not even that is safe anymore, because people with bombs can still come by and take everyone away. Cobb almost did.

Nothing, nowhere, is permanent. Nothing except grief, and loss, and soul-crushing agony. Those, of all things, have never left her.

She pours herself a full glass of wine, and downs most of it in one go, her face drained of all its color and vigor. She is unraveled, almost as though she's given up. Unraveled enough that she let Tony in, and told him these things about herself, things he was never meant to know, never meant to be burdened with.

But of all the people who have come and gone in Ziva's life, Tony has been the most consistently dependable. He is her friend, maybe the best she's ever had. Combing through their history is like dancing through a field of thorns, but he's all she's got. And so she lays these stories at his feet, and wonders if he's ever going to look at her the same way again. She wouldn't blame him if she didn't.

So she is astonished when he clears away the pizza box between them, and comes towards her, and holds her as close as he did when they caught Cobb, when he brought her back from Somalia. In disbelief, she returns his hug – slowly at first, and then tightly, all at once.

"Doesn't this…change everything?" she asks over his shoulder.

"No," he says in her ear. "While I can't promise you that bad things won't happen, that you won't lose anyone anymore, I _can_ promise you that this doesn't change anything. What you or your family did before…it doesn't change anything for us."

She buries her face in his neck, breathes him in, lets the cool sweetness of relief flood through her.

"I've always been wrong about you," she says into his skin. "You surprise me every time."

"In a good way, I hope."

"The best way." She sighs. "I seem to be wrong about so many people. My father, my brother. Gibbs, at first. Michael. EJ, too."

He lets go of her, and tilts her chin up so that she meets his gaze. "People who are close to you can be the hardest to figure out," he tells her. "And everyone makes mistakes. Don't take it personally."

She doesn't look entirely convinced, but her eyes are wide and vulnerable, and the set of her mouth is soft, and some of the color is back in her face. He takes another slice of pizza out of the box, and holds it in front of her, like a peace offering.

He wins a smile, and she takes a bite, and then five more. It's been a few days since either of them ate properly, and now her appetite comes roaring back. He takes another slice of pizza too, and pours them both wine, and they eat in contented silence.

Because no, nothing is permanent – but in this moment, they are at peace, and this is the one that counts.

* * *

NCIS is in the process of rebuilding, so remaining NCIS agents, including Gibbs's team, are set up in temporary office space. It seems incredible that after a bomb incapacitated the agency so badly, there are still other cases to solve – but there are, and Gibbs puts them right back to work, as though nothing has happened. It's both comforting and unbelievable.

McGee is not allowed to come back to the field for at least four weeks, and with his broken wrist, the doctor recommends staying away from the computer too. But he comes by anyway, and tells Tony what to type on the computer – and honestly, he enjoys bossing Tony around more than doing the work himself.

They try to get back to normal, work all hours on their cases – but in the last six years, the word "normal" isn't even in their vocabularies anymore. They have been through so much, they aren't sure if they are stronger for it, or that much closer to breaking for good. Their little unit is tight, but it is wary, now trained to be afraid of the next threat, the next bad thing to rock their worlds.

It's impossible to say with any degree of certainty where they are, or where they're going. And such a thought has never scared Gibbs's team more.

* * *

Tony and Ziva circle tentatively around each other in the weeks that follow – dancing on the edge of a precipice, too afraid to look down or back away.

They have dinner together sometimes, usually at one of their apartments. She's a better cook than he is (because she knows how to cook) so usually, she's the one in charge of food, and he plays sous chef, clumsily chops vegetables and acts the comic relief. They share a glass of wine, maybe watch a movie – they keep it easy, and yet neither can deny that sometimes, easy just isn't enough anymore.

He's known for ages that he loved her. He got his first inkling when he found out that she was dating Michael Rivkin, and he realized that he minded. But nothing ever felt possible before – they have both been through too much – and anyway, Gibbs has a rule about this, and Tony wasn't sure if he had it in him to break it, jeopardize his job, or worse, his working relationships.

It took her longer to figure it out – took her until now, really, when he comes over for dinner and she misses him after he leaves for the night. He has been an integral part of her life for years and years – he stuck around, even when he probably would have been better off not doing so – and she's aware that he is monumental to her.

And yet, in the same stroke, she is afraid, because past experience has taught her that feelings make everything messy, and that too much intimacy will ruins good relationships. And Tony means too much to her, to go that far.

She's tempted, but she holds herself back. The two of them can't stay away, and so they take what they can, savor it for as long as they have it, and go on with their jobs.

This is the life they chose. Relationships have always come second to work. And it takes a while to undo a lifetime of reinforcement.

* * *

But the thing is, work is no longer enough. The potential for misery and disaster no longer rules out or overrules the potential for happiness that trumps all else. Because that's what they do when they're together – they make each other happy – and it's not so hard to believe that after these small tastes, they both crave more.

Gibbs has his rules, but Tony doesn't think it's fair to have to choose between his boss and his partner. It's like making him choose between his two legs – he needs both to walk. He's getting older now, and what he has with Ziva is real and it feels good and he hates having to feel like they are doing something wrong.

The rules shouldn't matter as much as they do. It should be about what he wants, what she wants. And unless he's very deeply mistaken, he's getting the same vibe from her. Like she wants this and feels this too. Like something good is within their reach, if only they stretch their fingers out and take it.

* * *

After a particularly long, difficult case, he takes her out to his favorite little Italian place, on the other side of the city. She gets a chicken dish, and he gets spaghetti, and they end up eating half of the other's plates as well as their own, laughing over a glass of champagne and swapping stories.

She tells him one about Tali's first date, when she was thirteen and Ziva was sixteen. Tali wanted to wear makeup, but their mother was already gone, and Ziva didn't know the first thing about the stuff. Tali spent three months worth of pocket money in order to buy whatever little jars and bottles she could hold at the drug store, and the two of them experimented with each item, trying to figure out what it was and how it worked.

Ziva chuckles wistfully. "I tried to do her up, and I thought I did a good job," she says. "But when she looked in the mirror, she started crying because she thought she looked ugly – as though she could ever be ugly. She almost canceled her date, but then I put on a little lipstick and made her go. They went dancing. She had a good time, and came home convinced that she was going to marry him."

His heart goes a little soft at the thought of a younger Ziva, carefully coloring in her sister's lips with a tube of lipstick. "So she was a fan of the boys, huh?"

"And they were a fan of her," says Ziva. "Not like me. When a boy kissed me for the first time, I punched him in the face."

"What?! Poor guy!"

"I was ten, Tony."

"And lethal, apparently, even then," he laughs. "You won't punch me if I kiss you, will you?"

"Have I ever?"

"No," he admits.

"Then there is your answer."

"How comforting."

She kicks him under the table, but he is too busy gobbling up his spaghetti, and she remarks that she has seen toddlers eat with more sophistication. She's kidding, but he swirls a heap of spaghetti onto his fork and stuffs the whole thing in his mouth, as if to demonstrate his toddler-ness. She covers her eyes, like he is just too disgusting to watch, and he almost chokes because of the way her nose crinkles. His eyes water, and he needs a few sips of champagne to wash the pasta down.

When they finish, he pays the bill, and the two of them walk out together, warm and satiated. She is so lovely when she's in this mood – relaxed, playful, her cheeks full of color. They walk out to his car, just talking about everything, and they linger by the driver's side door, unwilling to go inside and end the evening.

She's saying something about how there's this new Thai place that opened up near her apartment block that they should try next time when he loses the reins on his self-control. She is so lovely, and in her presence, so is he – and he's getting tired of pretending. Of not doing what he wants.

So he shuts off his brain, because it only seldom gets him anywhere – and he leans into her, and kisses her. Right there in the parking lot, where anyone could see them.

He kisses her, and she doesn't stop him.

She throws her arms around his neck and opens his mouth with her tongue, as though she's been waiting for him to do exactly this. She tastes familiar and also not familiar – because the last time they kissed, they were both different people, and this time, they just fit better. Their kiss is involved, and breathless, and exquisite – and when she stops him, unsteady and wild-eyed, it feels too soon.

She rests her forehead against his, the tips of their noses touching. He can practically hear her heart beat, they are so quiet.

She says, "We can't do this again." Almost like a warning to them both.

"I know, I know," he mumbles. "But I needed to know."

"Know what?"

"How it feels to do that without an excuse."

She exhales a slow, steady stream of air; he feels it against his throat. She remembers when she said that to him, almost a lifetime ago. She lets him go, and leans back against the car, her eyes up to the stars.

"Gibbs would kill us," she says.

"Yeah, he would." Tony leans against the car beside his, crossing his arms and not taking his gaze off of her.

"But if he didn't…then, what would you want, Tony? What are you looking for?"

She's looking him in the eye too, waiting for the truth.

So he tells her, "Whatever you'll give me."

The set of her jaw is tight. "I'm not sure what I have left to give," she says quietly.

"We can pretend this never happened, if you want."

"But it did," she says, eyes flashing, "and I'm not sorry."

"So what do we do?"

She licks her lips, looks to the ground and then back at him. "Whatever we want, I suppose."

They stare at each other for another couple of seconds – and then she leans in, and kisses him once more, just as deeply, just as desperately.

Because while they have every reason in the world not to want this, or do it, they fit together in the strangest way – and she's running out of reasons not to listen to her body. She has been hurt before, badly, and she's not sure if she can give him what he needs – but she wants to try. Kissing him, and feeling the way she does, makes her brave.

She whispers into his lips mid-kiss, "You know that I can't promise you anything, right?"

"It's okay," he tells her, and presses her up against the side of his car, the handle of the door cutting into her lower back.

But in her head, she finishes sadly, _it's only okay for now._

* * *

That night, he drives her to his apartment, kissing her at every red light and earning a chorus of angry car horns when he always misses the start of the green light. And when they get to his living room, their clothes start coming off, and they do it right there on the couch, too impatient to wait until they get to the bed.

And though she has alarm bells in her head, screaming at her that this is a terrible, terrible idea – _what on earth will Gibbs do to them if/when he figures this out?_ – but those bells no longer match the urgency of their kisses, which fill her up like a sensory traffic jam, and drive every other thought to the periphery of her head.

_This is what I want_, he thinks to himself, as he lowers his face to her shoulder, his nose against her neck. _Please just let me have what I want_.

They spend the night on his hardwood floor, and he is so wrapped up in his bliss that he doesn't say a single word about what this does to his back the next morning.

* * *

That night is where it starts for them – a routine of spending Friday and Saturday nights together, sleeping together in one of their beds, shedding the guilt and the doubt along with their discarded clothes.

They find a way to touch as often as they can – hands brushing when passing on folders at work, driving together to interviews and kissing in parking lots, the memorable time when he had to take a shower at work and she snuck down to take it with him. This thing they have is hot and heady and all consuming – but strangely, there's no real pressure or expectation.

Actually, it feels like they are finally doing something right. Both walk into work happier, more relaxed, on Monday mornings, and he's whistling all the time now, like there is too much joy inside him to contain. Hardly anything changes at work either – they spend so much time there together anyway, and they are used to the demands of the job.

So they keep their little secret to themselves for several weeks, with no one much the wiser. McGee sometimes looks like he's having an inkling, and neither Tony nor Ziva put it past Gibbs to know yet not say a word – but since the job keeps clicking along, and they aren't screwing it up, it remains under wraps and they get to be happy.

This is the best he's felt in years. She brings that out in him – his passion, his tenderness, his keenly romantic side. And, in turn, she blossoms too. She sleeps better when he's with her.

It's all so good. Too good. And if it were just a little less good, perhaps they would have realized that these things never last – that what goes up must come down.

And with these highs they are reaching, a hard crash is practically inevitable.

* * *

The crash comes in the form of Eli David, sneaking back to the U.S. for the first time in fifteen years, surprising his daughter with a secret visit.

He is sentimental in his old age, and comes to make amends. But Ziva is wary, uncertain – she has been so blissfully out of touch with her demons of late – and though part of her wants to hear him out, maybe even forgive him, she still hasn't developed those softer instincts. Hers tell her to keep her distance. Eli has only ever set a precedent for heartbreak.

But he is her father – the only family she has left, for better or worse – and so when he wants to take her out to dinner, she cancels her plans with Tony, and goes with him. Ironically, Eli chooses the same Italian restaurant where she and Tony chose to become what they are now.

"Let this visit be my first step to redemption." This is what he says to her, over red wine and linguine.

She tries to believe him. She wants to. But her sleep is troubled and fitful all the same – because she doesn't believe him. How can she? He might be making his first step to redemption tonight – but he has a long road to travel to get there, and one step just doesn't mean as much as he wants it to.

* * *

For a night and a day, she stews in self-doubt, wondering if she is being too hard on Eli. He is her father, after all, and maybe she should give him time to explain, to prove himself. After seeing the way she has transformed over the years, perhaps it is possible that Eli, too, has come to see the error of his ways.

She tells Gibbs about Eli's visit anyway, though, and she feels an ancient, leaden guilt over her inability to trust her own father. But, as it turns out, what seems too good to be true usually is, and Eli's ulterior motives swiftly come to light. He is here for Ziva, but he is also here to meet with Kazmi to sign a peace treaty.

She wants to be mad at him – she has never been his top priority, not even as a child, no matter how much either of them tried – and yet she knows that politically, and even emotionally, this is a good move for the two nations. Eli using his words to win peace is more than Ziva could have hoped for even five years earlier; Eli is notoriously stubborn, with a violent streak. Maybe he really is trying to make things better before his retirement.

So when Eli asks her to talk to Vance about organizing a dinner at his house in order to facilitate negotiations with Kazmi, Ziva reluctantly agrees. And Vance, as keen as Ziva for peace in the Middle East, also reluctantly agrees.

The date is set – tonight at seven. But the rest of the day, there is a nervous twinge in Ziva's stomach – a leftover from the anxiety of seeing Eli in Washington in the first place.

Where Eli goes, he often brings trouble. And nothing she has seen of this life leads her to believe that such tricky things as peace – or redemption – comes smoothly.

* * *

When she sees the pictures on the camera, and realizes that Eli is the one who killed Wilkes, she wants to vomit. She almost does. She runs to the bathroom and dry-heaves over the sink, sick with horror at the casual way with which her father disposed of a man's body, at the way he lied to her, at the way that she believed him.

Important peace treaty or not, it was wrong. He killed a man, and he lied about it, and he still has the audacity to want her forgiveness. As though she wouldn't find out what he'd done.

When she confronts him about it, he isn't angry or defensive, merely resigned. Like he knows as well as she does that she is out of words, out of chances to give him. Because it's no longer about forgiving the things he has done – it's about forgiving him for who he is. For who he was too cowardly to become, even for her.

"I cannot abide by what you have done," she shouts at him. She is standing up, she is pacing, she is restraining herself from physically hurting him – and he is still sitting, motionless.

He sighs, but steadily holds her angry gaze. "One day, Ziva, you will understand why I do the things that I do."

"I will _never_ understand you," she hollers. "I am not like you. I will never understand your cruelty."

"No, you are not like me," he says, almost to himself. "You are much stronger than me by far."

He has no business being soft when she wants to hit him. His compliment feels like a curse. Because she _is_ too strong for him, and they are left with a vast gulf between them, virtually unbridgeable.

"They will catch you, you know. I will call Gibbs after your dinner with Kazmi, and he will arrest you. You are going to answer for at least one of the crimes you have committed."

"Ziva, I answer for my crimes every day of my life." He rises to his feet – back straight, facing her head-on. "Will you still come to the dinner tonight?"

"Why should I?"

"So that at least you will see why that man is dead."

"You do not even know his name."

Eli says nothing. He doesn't need to; they both know that he doesn't. He waits for her answer.

Ziva waits several long, tense minutes before she says, "All right."

"I will see you tonight," he says, squeezing her shoulder briefly as he walks out the door.

* * *

That evening, gunshots explode when Ziva is on the phone with Gibbs outside, and each one echoes in the chambers of her very heart. Because whatever happens in there is her fault – she vouched for Eli, she let him come to Vance's – and if someone is hurt, she doesn't know if she can forgive herself.

She races inside, her breaths shallow and panicked, trying to gauge the extent of the damage. But then she sees Eli, and time stops right there, as she takes in the sight of him, propped up against the doorframe, bleeding from his chest.

"_Abba!_"

The scream starts in her toes and rockets through her organs, explodes out of her mouth, a strangled screech that reaches for the stars, and yet is still not enough to bring Eli back to her.

He has already stopped breathing by the time she is beside him. He never got to say goodbye, never got to explain anything. As suddenly as he arrived back in her life two days ago, he is gone. The road to his redemption is still empty, un-walked.

Tears stream down her face, and she doesn't even try to stop them. She clutches her father's body, still warm, sobbing and hiccupping the Hebrew prayer he himself taught her when they buried Tali.

Whoever he was, whatever he did – he was still her father. It was one thing when she shut him out of her life voluntarily; it's another that he is really, truly gone, gone where he can't reach her. She lost him a long time ago, and yet, seeing his body on the ground, it hits her hard that she has now had to bury her entire immediate family. She's the only one left.

Ambulances and police cars are coming. Whoever shot up the house is long gone by now, but she doesn't have the energy to chase him. There is only grief, too big for this room, this house, the whole damn sky.

He is gone. There was no time or space to forgive him in life. For all that he was, she loved him once. She was daddy's little girl, daddy's little soldier, the one who survived and found her life and made him proud. And when tragedy strikes, it is the love, not the betrayal, which she remembers and cries for.

* * *

Tony is the one who has to restrain Ziva, when the doctors come to take Eli away. She almost takes his knee out with her ferocious kick, trying to stay with her father. But he holds her back, even as she fights him – and when Eli is gone, she crumples against him, turns around and presses her face into his jacket, releases an animal sob into the rough material. His shirt is in her fists and her tears soak through to his skin, to his breaking heart, and there are no words, none at all. So he holds her, and he lets her cry.

The bullets narrowly missed Gibbs, but Jackie Vance got hit in the arm. Vance rode in the other ambulance with her to the hospital, and they are patching her up now. But it was close, and Vance is shaken – shaken by how close he was to losing his whole world. So Eli is the only casualty, the only funeral that must be organized.

When Tony takes Ziva back to NCIS, so that Gibbs and Vance can figure out what to do next, something changes in her. A tough, cold, determined shell quickly replaces the raw vulnerability in Vance's dining room. Ziva the Mossad assassin – Ziva the unbridled ninja of years past – comes floating back to the surface, ready to take over and help her survive. It is understandable, but unnerving.

Tony knows this Ziva, and how far she will push the limits to get what she thinks she needs – and there is only one thing she needs right now: vengeance.

Gibbs comes back to the office about an hour after Tony and Ziva do, and gruffly tells them that there's nothing more they need to do tonight. They will pick up the case in the morning.

As they leave NCIS, Tony asks, "Do you want to come over tonight?"

Her eyes are still swollen from crying. She shakes her head, and says, "No. Tonight I need to be alone."

* * *

In the morning, Ziva gets her plane ticket to Israel, where she will plan and hold the funeral. A couple of her aunts have volunteered to help her, and she is to stay with one of them for the duration of her visit.

She tells Tony when he comes into work, that she is going in the evening and she will be gone for ten days. She delivers the news like a case report, all business. She is still pale, and her eyes remain a little swollen, but her hair is back in a neat, curly bun, and she wears a simple black shirt and pants, and the set of her jaw is resolute. The coldness from last night, too, lingers in her irises.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" he asks her, as they sit at their respective desks.

"Yes."

"Can I come with you?"

She looks up at him, her features taut. "Tony…"

"It just…sounds like a lot to do alone."

"I will not be alone. I will be with my aunts."

"I'm worried," he admits.

"Do not be."

"But I am."

She chews her lip and takes a moment before she tells him, slowly and deliberately, "I appreciate your concern, but no, you cannot come with me. This is a family matter. I will deal with it myself."

And he wants to go, so badly, because he can see that she is hurting, and there is something dark brewing inside of her – but he nods.

"Okay. Call me when you get in."

"I will," she promises.

* * *

And she does, at around two in the morning. She tells him that she's fine, that she is at her aunt's house, and the women are making funeral plans as she speaks. The conversation is brief – but at the end of it, without thinking, he says, "Good luck, Ziva. Love you. Bye."

He hangs up before he realizes what he said – but his heart goes cold with that unexpected word, 'love.' Because even though he knows that's what he feels, he has never said it aloud to her like that before. And in his infinite wisdom, he let it slip over by mistake over a long-distance phone call.

She, too, goes cold at the word – frightened, wary. Suddenly, their relationship looms heavy on her chest. Prior experience tells her when the word 'love' gets involved, it takes her prisoner and then there's no way out.

She almost calls him back to yell at him for saying that, especially at a time like this – but she doesn't. Instead she turns that word on her tongue over and over and over again – love, the beautiful destroyer – tasting its aching sweetness, its lingering bitterness.

* * *

The funeral is simple and intimate, close friends and family only. The rabbi present is the one that Ziva knew as a small child. He hugs her tightly when he sees her, and gives her his condolences.

The Psalms are read, and Ziva gives her eulogy. It is short, and vague, and doesn't even come close to describing the Eli she knew, the Eli who could never love her the way she needed him to. She focuses on his service to Israel – the job that was his life, his legacy. She knows he would have wanted that. He _was_ his job, for better or worse. And then Eli is buried, and the funeral is over.

She does her _K'riah_ after the service rather that before. She enters her father's apartment and takes one of the knives he always hid in the top left drawer in his desk. Once in the privacy of her room in her aunt's home, she stands up straight, and carefully slices a long gash into her black shirt with the knife, also nicking the tiniest bit of her own blood.

The seven days of _shiva_ start now, and she takes to her bed, sleeps on and off for days, only eating when her aunts force food down her throat.

She is the daughter of a dead man. She is in Israel for the first time in years. The air is dry and hot, and it smells like a time long gone. A time when she was young, and Eli was young, and things weren't quite so fucked up yet. She lets herself cry for as long as she wants, over all that has been lost.

* * *

On her last day in Israel, she plants an olive tree in the meadow where Eli had said that he and Kazmi once played as boys.

Peace was his last project, the one that killed him. She doesn't know when it will come to this passionate, troubled place. But she leaves the olive tree for her father in the hope that someday, the world will change as Eli himself could not.

* * *

When she returns to D.C., she is back to business, back to her cold determination to uncover the circumstances of Eli's death, no matter the cost. The first night, when she comes to Tony's apartment straight from the airport, he tastes it in her kiss – the way she clutches his hair, and bites down on his lip, and doesn't give him a second to breathe. Her intensity takes on a hungry, reckless edge, like she's searching him for something; she rides him hard and fast, and the release is cathartic, but painful.

Again, he sees her unraveling, struggling to understand how and why so much has been taken away from her in the last eight years. She isn't fragile so much as brittle – strong until poked in just the right spot, at which point she falls apart. He's just afraid to find out where exactly the breaking point is.

He knows from the beginning, that she's up to something suspicious. She cancels her plans with him almost every time. She forces herself to fade out of his life, because she is grieving, and she needs answers, and also he told her that he loved her, and she still isn't sure how to feel about that. Her priorities are different in this moment. She needs to understand about Eli.

And he lets her have her space, because he knows these things about her and he does indeed love her – but the way her mood is, he fears the worst.

While she was in Israel, Tony, Gibbs and McGee investigated Eli's death – and the day after Ziva returns, McGee makes the connection about Bodnar, and Kazmi's car is bombed as he is on his way to the airport.

Tony can almost pinpoint the moment that Bodnar comes on Ziva's radar: her eyes narrow, her lips purse, and there is nothing but the promise of impending death in her eyes.

* * *

For weeks, she is quiet. She works the cases as she always has, and sometimes she seems like she's almost back to normal. She goes out with him for drinks a couple of times, though she doesn't come over again. Not like the first night. She's keeping some distance between them, as though she is afraid to need him so openly again.

He doesn't figure out what she's doing with McGee at first. Technically, Homeland is taking care of the David case, and is in charge of capturing and prosecuting Bodnar. But after two weeks of supposed normalcy, Tony has one of his hunches, and convinces Abby to locate Ziva's cell phone. He grabs the address and drives over to investigate.

And there, in a dingy, abandoned apartment, he finds that Ziva has taken matters into her own hands, and was working with McGee since she got back in order to track Bodnar herself.

He can't pretend that he isn't hurt, because he is. Ziva senses as much; she has the decency to blush, and explain that she needed McGee's technical skills right now, and she was going to ask him the next day for his investigative ones. Because tonight, they have found that Bodnar is most likely in Rome, and she needs her partner to go with her and find him.

The question is in her eyes – will he go with her? But the explanation was all he wanted. He doesn't have an answer for her yet. His head is too full; he needs time to process. He exits the apartment and drives home without saying a word.

* * *

A couple of hours later, she knocks on his door. Despite his better instincts, he lets her in.

"I wanted to tell you," she says the minute she is in his apartment. "You do not know how difficult it was, to keep that secret from you."

"You did a pretty good job, though. Hung me out to dry, and holed up with McGoo on the other end of town to solve the case. Very _professional_ of you."

She winces slightly at the insult, but insists, "Tony, you know that McGee's skillset is different than yours. And for this part of my investigation, I needed him."

"You weren't supposed to be investigating this at all."

"Is that why you're angry with me? Because I investigated behind Gibbs and Vance's backs?"

"No," he says, surprising them both with the volume and the force of his voice. "No, I'm not mad at you for breaking protocol, risking your job in order to run after that lunatic. I'm mad because you didn't tell me from the beginning what you were doing. You think McGee's the only one who knows how to track someone covertly? You think I wouldn't want to be part of this, to help you, to risk my neck along with yours because that's what you needed? I thought we were in this together."

"I was going to tell you!"

"But you didn't. You kept me in the dark because you thought that's what I wanted. Just like that assassination, when you dragged Gibbs back from Mexico instead of telling me what was happening. I thought that was over between us, Ziva. I thought that you finally trusted me."

Her eyes go dead at that; there is too much truth in his statement to ignore. She swallows thickly, her breaths short and heavy. She rubs her temples with her fingers, and paces around his living room, struggling to explain.

"I do trust you," she says. "You know that I do."

"No, actually. I don't. You've been shutting me out."

"There has been a lot going on—"

"And I would have been there to help you! You didn't have to do it alone!"

"You don't understand—"

"What don't I understand, exactly, Ziva? I don't understand about loss? Because I do. I don't understand how you deal with your grief? Bullshit. I do."

"There are some things that need to be done alone," she snaps, eyes blazing.

"But you weren't alone in this one either, were you? You told McGee."

"I needed his help!"

"And not mine."

"_No!_ Not right at that moment!" Now she's screaming too, her whole body pulsating with real anger. "I needed McGee because he is not personally involved with me. Because he didn't tell me that he loved me. I needed his objectivity."

"So _that's _what this is about? You didn't tell me about your investigation because I told you that I loved you?" His voice shoots up an octave in disbelief.

"Like I said, I needed his objectivity." She hurls the word at him like a slap to the face. "I need revenge, Tony. Not somebody holding my hand."

"And you think I can't do that for you." It's not a question, but a statement, delivered so quietly that she almost wishes he would start yelling again.

"I am…sorry, that I did not tell you," she says, every word stinging them both. "I tried to handle this the best way that I knew how. That is who I am. Can you forgive me?"

The apartment is so awfully quiet after that. The only sound they hear is that of their own breathing – shallow, tentative.

He waits for what feels like a full century, before he finally breaks the tension and says, "Yeah. So you said Bodnar was in Rome?"

* * *

A car crash, some clever detours, assorted injuries and orders from Homeland Security do not deter Ziva's quest for Ilan Bodnar.

She figures out about the note, and she tracks down Bodnar at last, just before he is about to make his escape. And, as much as she hates him, she will not shoot an unarmed man. So they brawl, and her fist sinks into his flesh, and she gets the pleasure of throwing him off a building, and watching the surprise on his face as he falls to his death.

She violated the doctor's orders, and was not in fact sanctioned by Homeland to make this hit – but it feels good to know that it's really over, and she's the one who ended it.

* * *

But the Department of Defense sends Richard Parsons into their lives, because all was not well with the death of Ilan Bodnar, and someone needs to answer for it.

After increasingly high-stakes game playing, Tony, Ziva and McGee realize that it's going to be Gibbs.

"I believe in upholding the law, Gibbs. And I'm tired of watching you break it." Parsons is smug, and armed with reams of documents from the last ten years. He is hungry for blood.

Gibbs warns Ziva not to get involved. "It's not your job," he tells her, in the cabin in the woods.

"This is not about my job – it's about my family," she retorts, as she storms out.

Tony tries to chase after her, but she returns straight to NCIS, where she knows Parsons will likely be sniffing around for more intel.

And Parsons isn't the only one hungry for blood.

* * *

"You stay away from us!" she warns him the second she sees him – indeed, at NCIS headquarters, sitting in Gibbs's desk and peering through the drawers. "Get away from Gibbs's desk."

"I have a warrant," he retorts, pulling out of his suit pocket as though expecting this.

She tosses the warrant aside on the floor, coming up so close that she can see every detail in his cocky brown eyes.

"There is nothing for you to investigate. Leave Gibbs alone," she repeats.

"There is everything for me to investigate," Parsons returns. "He has been flouting the law for twenty years, just because it's convenient for him! And he's covered up for the rest of you, too. Hardly a trait _I_ would want in an investigative agent. I am merely trying to find out the truth, and make sure justice prevails."

"Is that really what you're doing here?"

"If I were you, Agent David, I would be careful about what kind of questions I ask, and where I point my finger," says Parsons slickly. "Because I know about your little affair with Agent DiNozzo, and believe me, I can make life _very_ uncomfortable for you if you try to interfere with my investigation."

"Agent DiNozzo has nothing to do with this," she practically growls.

"Oh, but he does!" Parsons is maddening, and he knows it. His smile is wickedly amused. "He has everything to do with the quality of your judgment. And, considering you got him to help you on your little hunt for Ilan Bodnar, against the express wishes of Homeland Security – well, there's a case just _waiting_ to be made about both of your incompetence."

Ziva is nearly purple in the face, trying to restrain herself from murdering Parsons where he stands. She says nothing. But he mistakes her silence for reluctant acquiesce.

"Please keep yourself in check, Agent David. And stop trying to help yourself and Agent Gibbs's team evade justice. I'll be in touch."

He gives Ziva one last nasty little smile, then turns on his heel and walks towards the elevator.

* * *

It doesn't take long for Tony, Ziva and McGee to figure out what their next move. It's not pretty, and it's not a permanent fix, but it's enough for now – and it is what needs to be done. For Gibbs.

The three of them march upstairs to Vance's office, calm and sure of themselves. They hand in their badges, three gold shields in a line, glinting in the sun coming in through Vance's window blinds. Vance is astonished, but the team – the ex-team – is not. For ten years, this place was their whole lives. But for now, at least, it is time to part ways.

They leave NCIS before the sun is down, an unprecedented move in and of itself. The whole day is blank, free – completely theirs.

McGee turns to Tony and Ziva and asks, "Want to go get drunk?"

Tony and Ziva break into identical grins.

Tony says, "Of course."

* * *

After drinks with McGee, Tony and Ziva stand around outside the bar a while – a little tipsy, more than a little shell-shocked from their decision this afternoon, but strangely at peace. While they were drinking, Abby called their phones about twenty-eight times (each) so they played a drinking game to see who would have to call her back and calm her down – and McGee lost. The two see him call her in his car, and jump badly when she answers and apparently starts screaming in his ear. Ziva laughs, and gives thanks for her ability to hold down her alcohol – she had almost lost the game instead.

McGee drives off, his mouth still moving fast, presumably trying to explain the situation to Abby, but Tony and Ziva aren't quite ready to go yet. They walk out to Tony's car holding hands, swinging their arms around and basking in the late afternoon sunlight. It's warm and sweet outside right now, the breeze gently kicking up Ziva's hair, casting honey-colored shadows on the contours of both of their features.

"So, what do we do now?" Ziva asks, because someone has to.

Tony leans back against his car, his face to the sky. "Well," he muses aloud, "I haven't had a real vacation in living memory. I think I'd like one, before I do anything else. Maybe go to the beach."

"The beach sounds nice," she agrees. "You want to go now?"

His head snaps back up. "Are you crazy? We have to—" He pauses, his brain whirring.

She laughs and laughs at him. "No, we don't!" she exclaims.

"Let's go to the beach," he says. "Follow me up to your place in your car, and then we'll go in mine together."

"I'm _still_ not allowed to drive?"

"You are never allowed to drive."

She sticks up her middle finger at him, but laughs jubilantly and gets in her car – and the two of them drive off.

* * *

The sun is setting by the time they reach the beach, but it's May and the evening is balmy. The soft blue of the night is encroaching on daylight fast, but Tony and Ziva aren't in any rush. The day, the night, and every hour in between is theirs right now.

When they get near the water, Ziva says, "I'm tired of this."

"Of what?"

"Of everything. The secrets, the lies. The long hours, the rules."

"God, how drunk did you _get_?" His mouth is grinning, but his eyes are serious.

"Really, though," she says. "I'm just…tired."

"Me too," he says. "But we're at the beach now, and we're technically unemployed. There aren't any rules."

She beams at the thought, her face lit up like a thousand-watt bulb is on behind her cheeks. "That's true."

So she takes off her shoes, right there in the sand, as well as her socks, her pants, her t-shirt. And then she goes ahead and takes off her underwear too, and sprints into the water, lets the tide knock her off her feet and briefly fall beneath the water. When she comes up, her wet ponytail is stuck to her face, and she is shivering, and she looks the happiest he has ever seen her.

"Come on!" she shouts. "I'm waiting!"

He beams back at her, chuckling at her daring. "You're crazy!"

"I know!" She still beckons him forward, and that's really all the excuse he needs.

He, too, takes off his shoes, and the rest of his clothes – the trappings of his everyday life – and sprints into the water with her. He swims out to her, and brings her into him, breathing in the salt and the seaweed and the jasmine scent on her skin.

She kisses him hard, like she's making up for lost time. She kisses him everywhere – line of his jaw, the outer shell of his ear, the hollows in his neck and shoulder, the curves of his throat, his collarbone. She kisses him her apologies for her most recent betrayal, and the ones that came before it. One of his hands is in her hair, and the other is on the small of her back; he presses her up against him, and kisses her his forgiveness, his own apologies.

Tonight is the first time they have ever really felt free to be this happy.

NCIS and Team Gibbs are home, but here, they are untethered from the pressure of Gibbs's rules, the pervasive tragedy that it is their business to solve. In this moment, they are even untethered from their own tragedies, all the things that make them afraid. Here, they have found a different kind of home in each other – one that feels wrong to deny themselves. One that required a wrenching resignation to materialize.

A couple of birds sing their song in the distance, and into her shoulder he murmurs, "I do love you, you know."

An echo of the old fear, the old distrust and suspicion, comes back to her – but it doesn't overwhelm her anymore. She's tired of fighting him. So she says, "You too."

"Nothing is permanent," he says into her neck, "but whatever we do next, I am here for you. This is real for me."

She blinks back a sudden, bizarre onset of tears. "I know," she says, believing him for the first time in eight years.

He kisses her deeply – and as he does so, he remembers what she said when they were deciding to resign. _I do not depend on happy endings_. A casual, throwaway line that meant nothing to her and everything to him.

That's what she was taught growing up – that she can't depend on anything or anyone. And maybe it's true; maybe she can't depend on a happy ending. Life can be cruel, and after all, nothing really is permanent – not their jobs, not their mortalities.

Yet, despite that, he's determined to give her a happy ending anyway.

* * *

A/N: Aaaaaand…that's a wrap!

(Also, real quick- I realize that I didn't address Gibbs finding out about Tony and Ziva's romantic relationship. It's because a) this is already long enough. And b) If I were an NCIS writer, I'd want to leave that juicy little scene for the Season 11 premiere. So it's not lazy writing, I promise.)

But man was that whole thing a doozy. If you made it to the end here, congratulations, you deserve a cookie or a Caff-Pow or something. I feel like we both do. I mean, bravo. I wrote it and you read it. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

And if you did indeed read all the way to the end, then I'm sure you must have something to say – so please make sure you leave a review for me before you go!


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